Stool Pigeon

"I ain't no stool pigeon," or a snarl to that effect is often heard in those 1940s and 1950s cop, crook, and DA movies.

As often as I've heard this declaration, I never really looked into how it got to mean that the person saying it is someone who will not betray, or entrap another bad-guy person just so the law will give them a break--the stool pigeon that is.

I always got the meaning from the context, but not the origin. There was no need, really. I understood what the potential "stoolie" was trying to say. But, like many things in this life, an explanation presents itself when you least expect it.

Under the heading of I read almost anything, I read about a book that's just come out: 'A Feathered River Across the Sky,' by Joel Greenberg. It's about the passing of the passenger pigeon.

This really is a book about pigeons, and a species of pigeon that the reviewer, John Steele Gordon tells us was "once the most numerous bird on the planet," that has now gone extinct. And not prehistorically extinct, but extinct within the last 150 years.

Over-hunting wiped the bird out of the sky, much like the easy killing of the buffalo left them on the backs of more nickels than those roaming the plains.

Shooting the pigeons was common, but also using nets to capture them was effective as well. The pigeons were lured with traps baited "with corn and other grains, along with tame birds to lure the wild ones."  This apparently gave rise to the term "stool pigeon," because the birds were tethered to a small platform called a stool. "When enough birds had gathered, the trap would be sprung and snap over the victims." Thus, a "stool pigeon" was a bit of a double agent: pretending to be a feathered friend, while leading the target to their capture.

My own experience with a pigeon is the unforgettable time that my pregnant wife ran down the neighbor's driveway to get our cat to drop the pigeon that was in his mouth. I watched this play out from our kitchen window. The cat was more afraid of an oncoming pregnant person than he was inclined to stick to one of his animal instincts. He dropped the bird and ran. The bird was alive, scooped up by wife and placed in a box, where he was nursed back to health with the help of a vet and a person my wife knew at work who raised pigeons.

When our daughter was born I was pleased to note she made into this world with no feathers. So far, no "stoolies" in our family.

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