Snow Day Rules
130.06 THROWING STONES
(a) No person shall throw any stone, snowball or any other missile upon or at any vehicle, building, tree or other public or private property or upon or at any person in any public or private way or place or enclosed or unenclosed ground, nor injure or frighten any bird or birds within the city, or throw any stones or other missiles where they might injure any person or property.
(b) It shall be a defense to Sections 130.01 (a) and 130.06(a) in a situation involving snowballs if the thrower and the designated target of a snowball have consented to or have mutually engaged in the throwing of snowballs. No snowballs shall, in any event, contain stones or other hard objects within them.
I like the fact that the city fathers decided it should be against the law to frighten birds, but I wonder how you can “mutually engage” in a snowball fight: someone has to throw the first ball.
December 15th, 2005 14:24
Thomas - I’m going to throw a snowball at you as you leave your office today. Do you consent?
Also, can’t part (a) be read in a way that the clause about “nor injure or frighten any bird or birds within the city” is an imperative indepdendent from the rest of the wording about stones and snowballs? If so, this could have all sorts of zoning implications.
Chris
December 15th, 2005 15:15
Yeah, I had the same thoughts when I read it. I think the intention is clearly to limit throwing stones to scare birds, but I think the clear meaning imparted by the sentence structure imposes a general responsibility to refrain from frightening birds.
We could probably spend some time debating this though, as well as the thorny issue of whether birds have the capacity to feel a human emotion like “fright.”
I assume that just walking out my back door I impose a fair amount of fear on the birds in the back yard.