Sparrows

    
     If you're not careful, trying to solve one problem, you end up creating a worse problem.

     House sparrows, such as these black-throated specimens above, were an English bird, introduced to the United States in 1851 as a way to combat caterpillars. Over the next 50 years, sparrows spread across the continental United States.
     That's an oversimplification — there were continuing efforts to bring the bird to this country through the 1870s, on both coasts.
     By the 1880s, sparrows were seen as pests, and an effort was made to undo the folly — bounties were put on them. Books were written on how to hunt sparrows. Regret set in.
     “Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English Sparrow.” W.L. Dawson wrote 1903 in "The Birds of Ohio."
     To add insult to injury, it was discovered, too late, that sparrows do not eat insects. They eat seeds, and grain.
     This sparked what was called "The Sparrow War" in the late 19th century, with some advocating their destruction, and whether they could be considered "American" birds — a designation which was not grudgingly given until 1931, according Diana Wells' essential "100 Birds and How They Got Their Names."
     At first, Wells writes, "sparrow" described any small bird. The word itself is old, from Old English spearw, , meaning "a flutterer." The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word deep into the mists of time, well over a thousand years old, offering numerous cognates, including the useful "sparrow-blasting," deployed with jocular or contemptuous force" and meaning, "The fact of being blasted or blighted by some mysterious power, skeptically regarded as unimportant or non-existent," popular around the late 1500s.
     Another useful variant is found in Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang" — "sparrow cop," defined as "a policeman in disfavor with his superiors and assigned to a park to guard the grass," dismissed as "not common," though perhaps it should be.
     I expected Noah Webster, writing his 1828 dictionary, to view them as English birds, but he does no such thing, calling them, "a small bird of the genus Fringilla and order of Passers. These birds are frequently seen around houses," which certainly meshes with my experience.   

     Working backward in time, to Samuel Johnson's great 1755 dictionary, a sparrow is merely "a small bird." He quotes a line from Macbeth that at first seems bland, almost meaningless: "As sparrows, eagles, or the hare, the lion." Until you check the context — the Captain is answering a question whether Macbeth and Banquo are frightened by an attack from the Norwegians, and declares they are as little concerned as eagles and lions are when confronting sparrows and rabbits.
     Johnson wrote his dictionary practically alone — an accomplishment that was to be of great pride to his countrymen, especially compared to French team who spent decades compiling their nation's dictionary — so can be forgiven for overlooking a much stronger appearance in Shakespeare. Horatio tells his friend Hamlet that if his mind isn't in his duel with Laertes, he will find a way to delay it.
     "Not a whit, we defy augury," the melancholy Dane insists. "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come, the readiness is all."
     That sounds like a plan but — spoiler alert — the duel will be the death of Hamlet, Laertes, Gertrude and Claudius.
     In other word, thinking you are ready for what you suppose is coming, and actually being prepared for the mean trick fate actually has in store for you, can be two very different things.