For the Birds

Yvette Bavier says she made it through the first 60 years of her life without getting into trouble with the law. That ended on her lunch break recently. She was tossing birdseed to sparrows when two New York City police officers stopped her. She says it took them 20 minutes to figure out what to charge her with, but she was eventually given a ticket for littering. She says she was even more stunned when, as they departed, one of the officers told her if she went to court she could probably get the ticket dismissed. A police spokesman says the officers were responding to a complaint that someone was endangering pigeons by feeding them raw rice.