I live in pretty nice neighborhood. My neighborhood is actually a small town that was a village 30 years ago. At that time my neighborhood village was composed of a central shopping area and some small outlying clusters of new homes in developments. The village residential property was mainly winter housing for Snowbirds and an eclectic mix of artists, one-boat commercial fishermen, and work-a-day people who travel elsewhere in the county for their jobs. There is still an active railroad spur that crosses Main St.

In the last 20 years there has been a lot of development both in the business area and annexed former unincorporated county areas. I have lived in apartments, owned condos, and conventional homes. They have all been within a single mile of each other.

I was visited this past week by a representative of the Village zoning and housing board. It seems that they are concerned that I have a snag of a dead pine in my back yard that they would prefer that I remove. I told them that I would certainly comply just as soon as the woodpeckers are finished brooding this years crop of young peckers. That was in the morning. By mid-afternoon they are back with a citation for some sort of non-compliance. They said that my tree, full of woodpeckers or not, presents a danger to the community and could fall under some provisions of the Patriot Act. They asked rhetorically, "What if we suddenly had a storm like Katrina come through, blew your tree over and endangered the middle-school?" (eight blocks away) Their very words. Tuesday, I am going to the town council meeting and plead my case for the woodpeckers.

I may take my chicken with me and check on her status? Her name is Paris.

LB