| 词汇 | duck in a noose |
| 词源 | duck in a noose. A phrase that figured as a sidelight in the sniper killings case that terrified the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks in the fall of 2002. The sniper wanted the chief of police of Montgomery County to repeat this phrase, which he had mentioned in a phone call, and Chief Moose did as he re- quested at a late-night news conference. What the sniper meant by the phrase was revealed in a Cherokee folk tale, “The Rabbit, the Otter and Duck Hunting.” In the tale, according to Celes- tine Bohlin writing in the New York Times (10/24/02), “a boast- ful rabbit is challenged by an otter to capture a duck. The rabbit manages to slip a noose around the neck of a duck, which then takes off, with the rabbit hanging on for dear life. The duck flies higher and higher, and finally the rabbit loses its grip and falls into an old sycamore tree where it is trapped . . .” Obviously, the sniper regarded himself as the escaping duck who couldn’t be caught, and the police as the hapless rabbit that would never catch him. |
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