Café du Canard Bizarre

One of our favorite little places in Barona is Café du Canard Bizarre, loosely translated Odd Duck Cafe. It is a great spot to get a decent brioche and good coffee on a Sunday morning, borrow a copy of The New York Times and sit outside reading lazily about life in the Big City and watch the scenery stroll by. Daniel is out of the country, and I took Tag Nelson (AKA Hank Pharr) to get coffee this morning and to try to soothe his rumpled feathers. Fortunately he liked the coffee, the brioche and the scenery. We have similar tastes, as it turns out.

Coincidentally the Museum of Hoaxes recently had an article about the origin of the word canard, in the sense of a false or absurd story. You can click on the link to find out more, which is that no one is quite sure but it probably does not have anything to do with reported duck cannibalism. (Now I'll bet you are interested enough to click the link, huh?)

This got me to wondering about the origin of the expression odd duck with its minor variations, strange duck, queer duck, funny duck. Or even lucky duck, although I wonder if the rhyme has something to do with the last one.

It turns out these expressions apparently have nothing to do with waterfowl. They simply reflect a centuries-old colloquial use of the word duck to mean a person. There is the British-ism, Ducks or Ducky, meaning a dear person, of course. Sometimes ducky means cute or fine, as in, "Everything is ducky."

At any rate, I was struck by the idea that Café du Canard Bizarre could also be translated as the Cafe of the Bizarre Tale. Or to take it even further ...