A hapless young fellow appeared at a hearing last week asking West Marlborough to bend its zoning rules. He is getting married soon, he explained, and his fiancee wants to bring her two horses along when she moves in. But the township code requires one acre per horse, and he was proposing to keep two horses in a now-wooded area measuring only 3/4 of an acre. The board members, most of whom had long experience with livestock, gently explained to him why this was not a good idea: the animals would quickly eat all the grass that could be coaxed to grow, the bare pasture would erode and the dirt would run into a neighboring stream.
The landowner admitted that he knew little about horses and had never owned any.
"You're a lucky man," quipped one board member dryly, who knew how horses become a priority for their owners.
Friends in Newlin lost water for the better part of a day last week (some mechanical problem), and I was struck by how their sole concern was making sure their horses had enough water. Toilets, drinking water and showers for themselves? Completely secondary and unimportant issues.
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