For the benefit of our new listeners tuned into CJAD 800, in Montreal, I'm going to reprise of one of my previous 'Takes'.

We use the term all the time but it would seem that very few of us understand exactly what U... F... O... really means! So, with that said, I feel that it has fallen to me to enlighten some to what the UFO acronym stands for.

The U does not stand for United or for Unknown or Underwater or Unavailable. (Even though the thoughtless things don't stick around long enough for us to do anything constructive with them!) The U stands for Unidentified! As in, the person or persons witnessing the object could not readily identify it! In other words, whatever they saw they did not recognize to be an airplane or a meteor or a ball of glowing swamp gas or even a flock of Birds!

That brings me to the reason for my little tirade here. On the UFO Updates there has been considerable discussion about what one observer's report being a flock of Pelicans or Pigeons or Snow Geese flying in the sunlight. Now there is NO doubt in my mind that some people witnessing a flock of birds flying in the sunlight may find themselves so caught up in seeing it that they might just mistake those birds for being something from another planet. However, if that same person or persons cannot readily identify what they're looking at as being a flock or a gaggle then it gets the Royal U as in Un...i...dentified!

Now just to finish off the rest of the acronym, the F does NOT stand for that infamous four-letter word, although many people witnessing UFOs have used that word extensively. now if you've followed along so far you might get a clue to what F stands for from the fact that some UFOs are actually flocks of birds. Yep, you guessed it, Flying. So, for something to get the UFO title it has to be Unidentified and Flying. Yep, it can cover a flock of birds especially if you're like me and you can't tell the difference between a Sparrow and a Nuthatch. BUT that brings us to the final part of UFO.

O does not stand for Ohmigod. Now I can easily understand why some of us get confused on that one, we've all heard reports from people that go:

"Look, look, it's an Unidentified Flying... Ohmigod! what is it?" So, I apologize to those who think O stands for Ohmigod but in reality it stands for Object. Now, put it all together and we have UNidentified Flying Object.

The key here is Unidentified! I don't care if it's a Plane, a Bird, Superman or some crashing piece of space debris, if the person who is witnessing it can't easily identify it as being something they recognize, it's unidentified and if it's airborne at the time they see it, it's flying.

Now to be perfectly honest, Pelicans, Pigeons or Snow Geese CAN be mistaken for something ELSE and they can easily go into the UFO category but as a Canadian I have seen hundreds, no, thousands of geese both in flight and on the ground and not even once have I ever looked at them and said "Look, Look, it's an Unidentified Flying... Ohmigod what is it!" Instead, I've said, "Look, a gaggle of Geese!"

Birds might be mistaken for UFOS and UFOS can be birds but birds cannot be alien spacecraft and alien spacecraft are most definitely UFOs.....

But that's just my take on it.....