BEAU MERLE! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

MERLE AMÉRICAIN

If you have a little bit of French Canadian vocabulary, the picture of the red-breasted bird is what you are thinking of -- maybe.  Then again, if you were brought up in a Frrench Canadian houselhold with a mother who was always looking for a new way to address creative expletives to her children, then you might have an idea what Beau Merle means.  If you have forgotten your French Canadian dialect as it was spoken in Massachusetts and other famous (infamous?) regions of New England and you're trying to apply the translated-to-English meaning of "Beau

Merle" [Pretty Robin] then you are nowhere near the true meaning of the expression.  It actually means, "Dopy," "Lost," something like a dunce who did something inexplicably and unexpectedly ignorant.  Like when we sometimes talk to ourselves and call ourself stupid or something like that.  Now, what do you suppose made me think of that?  Get ready for this.  We happened to be in Palm Springs the other evening and as we were wending our way to our destination, one of the streets was named "Merle."  I figured then and there that it couldn't be our French Canadian Patois [argot] that was being honored here.  It has to be Merle Haggard, or some such personage.  I must say that when you have a free-ranging imagination like mine, anything is fair game.  So, like a shot of lightning, there I was back in my old childhood frame of mind.  Then you know what I did?  When I got home,  I went to Google to check out the meaning of the expression that I had heard and used so often while growing up.  Nothing.  So I tried the pictures section.  That's where I found out that there is a breed of dog that in French is a Merle.  There is even one that has what seems to be blue fur.  Bow ain't that something!  There was one bird there that is so deeply blue that it appears black.   In case you are wondering,and perhaps you aren't, but the French and the French Canadian for Robin is in fact Merle Americain, so it is there, only it has to have the adjective Americain with it to be proper.
So, you can see, culture can be a tricky thing.  In our American English we have rats, pigs, asses and snakes to name a few, along with bird-brains, of course.  Robins?  Nope.  Not that I can think of anyway.  So, enjoy yourselves with the wildlife expressions that we used to snicker at ourselves and see if I missed any.