I had to laugh when I saw this sign on the drive along Steveston Highway in Richmond a couple of months ago (no, I wasn’t driving!).

You could interpret it a couple of different ways.  Perhaps the sign is having some sort of existentialist crisis.  Or could it be that whoever posted it was looking for something, but found, as it says, “no sign”?

If you add an “s” to the end of “sign”, though, you get what the poster was really trying to say. He didn’t want any signs on the fence along his property.  Except his own, of course.  Which broke his rule, when you think about it.

When I’m on my daily walk I like to take pictures of things that I find funny or unusual.  Signs or posters make me laugh the hardest sometimes.  People are clever.  Or sometimes just plain silly.

And sometimes, they’re simply pissed off.  Like the poster below.  I wrote about this one in another blog post awhile back.

I found this sign on a chain link fence outside of a house on a corner lot.  I’m guessing that people were throwing things by the fence, or maybe even in the yard.  I don’t blame the home owners for being mad.  We also live on a corner lot, and I find garbage in the bushes, sometimes even dog poop in baggies tossed along the boulevard, and it cheeses me off pretty seriously.

But this sign just made me laugh.  Especially the curt “Thank-You” at the end.  I guess it worked because the sign is no longer there, and I don’t see any “crap” anywhere.

The sign on the left was sitting outside a home that is situated on the bottom of a pretty steep road.  I’m guessing that gravity alone causes a lot of cars to come down that road pretty quickly sometimes.

But what’s funniest about the sign is the misspelled word “crosing”.  Whoever wrote it was definitely having a senior moment :-). I literally laughed out loud when I came across it!

Here is another photo I posted a couple of years back.  If you have trouble reading the small print, this is what it says: “Please do not walk your dog too close to the hedge as our cat is very territorial and protective of the lawn you’re walking on! She hides in the hedge! So walk on this lawn at your own risk! She does not discriminate by dog breed or size either!  Have a great day!  Woof? Meow! :-)”

There’s a picture of a cat chasing a dog at the bottom to illustrate the possible consequences. Also note the number of colourful pins.  This sign has since disappeared, so I imagine dog walkers did take note. I hope.

One of my favourites was this one 🙂  I wrote a whole post just imagining where the chicken had scuttled off to and what fate might await her.

Quite often when I’m walking past this house, there are a bunch of little pre-schoolers with their minders watching the chickens in their coop.  And the sound of chickens clucking is, for some reason, very comforting to me.  The city changed its by-laws in the last while to allow back yard chicken coops and, just in my little neighbourhood, there are at least four of them.

I don’t think chickens are dumb.  I think this one was plotting right from her first day in the hen house.

I loved the “Brown feathers, says “cluck” note.  Just in case you have any trouble identifying her.  And if you see her, be quick.  She is apparently VERY sneaky!

I’ve had this last one for quite some time now.  I’m not sure who posted it or why, but it certainly gave me a chuckle.

Somebody went to a lot of bother to create it in the first place.  They must have taken a picture of a picture of a picture…something like that.  You figure it out!

It was only up for a day or two and then it disappeared. Possibly a victim of the very wormhole it was looking for?

Of course, I often see the “lost cat” or “have you seen my bicycle?” signs out there. Garage sale signs abound, of course, especially in the spring and summer.

But the signs I take pictures of remind me that there are some very funny, clever people all around me.  They make me laugh, they put a smile on my face some days when I really need one. I once found a note on the ground that had obviously been left with a meal, left by one friend or neighbour for another.  The note said “Seeing as you can’t cook or have groceries, I thought I’d make lunch for you.  Hope you like it!”

It was on the street so I don’t know which house it belonged to and it was one of those moments that restored my faith in humanity, in our goodness, in spite of all the crappy things that always seem to be going on everywhere else.

Going out on my daily walks, aside from providing me with fresh air and healthy exercise, just makes me feel a whole lot better about our world.

IJ