Here’s a story about two groups of people in the world: lawyers and everyone else. The Venn Diagram of Lawyers and NonLawyers separates people who know in their hearts that comma placement is a science akin to nuclear physics, and people who are sane. There may be some overlap between the Lawyer circle and the NonLawyer circle, but these “sane lawyers” are a rare commodity. I proved this to myself recently when I wrote a legal research paper about backyard chicken farming. Putting myself in the shoes of a York County resident, I tried to figure out whether county ordinances would prevent me from raising chickens in my hypothetical backyard in York.
In this hypothetical world, I discovered that the County has all kinds of restrictions on raising “livestock.” Ok great. Here is where a normal person would read the livestock regulations and go on their merry chicken farming way. But I didn’t go through 3 years of law school to make things simple. We have to find out if chickens are actually livestock! All aboard the train to crazy town.
The County Code’s definition of livestock doesn’t actually seem to include poultry. The Code defines livestock as cows, horses, sheep, pigs, deer, antelope, llamas, emu, ostriches, fish, rabbits, and “any other individual animal specifically raised for food or fiber.” Ok, so maybe poultry are animals raised for food? Maybe, but the Code actually defines poultry separately from its definition of livestock. Are poultry both livestock and their own special category, or are they not livestock? WHAT’S THE ANSWER? After turning in all these definitional circles, I called the County, Nancy Drew style, and discovered that chickens are indeed livestock. At least the County thinks so. Way to go sane people. Way to keep the rest of us from going off the deep end. Now will someone please fix the Code? It gives me nightmares about emus being raised for fiber, whatever that means.
