Last night, I watched a German news broadcast about unethical repairmen overcharging their customers. A reporter posing as a housewife had three different repairmen look at her fully functional refrigerator. All three declared that it needed all kinds of work: a new thermostat, a new freezer unit, you name it. One of them took the freezer unit’s temperature and declared that it was only cooling to 45 degrees F (7 decrees C), which was odd since it was successfully keeping ice at the time. A broadcast label under the reporter/housewife announced that she was der Lockvogel. That’s the kind of Vogel, or bird, that helps with locken: luring, fooling, and trapping something. Der Lockvogel is a decoy or stool pigeon.
Clare B. Dunkle
