Animal Law
3 Not-So-Little Pigs’ Upscale Home Saved
Posted Jun 27, 2007, 01:25 pm CST
By Martha Neil
Three not-so-little pigs living in the upscale Chicago suburb of Lake Forest didn't, of course, have to worry about a wolf huffing and puffing and blowing their rickety house down. But their owner and her children were plenty concerned about a judge's potential ban of the 200-pound porkers from their 2.3-acre lot, due to a neighbor's complaint that the animals are a nuisance, violate zoning rules and harm property values.
From the pigs' standpoint, however, a resounding court victory has just saved them from potential homelessness. Estelle Gonzales Walgreen, a divorced member of the drugstore-chain family, can keep the pets until at least 2011, reports the Chicago Tribune.
That's when a municipal ban on farm animals takes effect, the article explains. But even then it isn't certain that the pigs fall within the definition of a farm animal, according to a ruling yesterday by Lake County Judge Mitchell Hoffman, which upheld a City Council decision last year.
The decision left Walgreen's neighbors, Robert and Kathleen Murphy, unhappily considering an appeal of the ruling. "No one wants to live next door to pigs," Robert Murphy says.