Horses and Heists

One of the more contentious issues in many communities is pets.  How many can we have? Where can they go?  What happens when they tromp thru someone’s garden?  Twin Oaks has two types of pets in our universe.  There are dogs and cats – both of which have waiting lists, which move fairly slowly.  And then there are all other animals, which if you can fit them in your room, have no other restrictions.

The other day a horse showed up.

[ Picture soon to be here]

Sometimes the community changes without you realizing it.  If you had asked me a week ago, if a horse showed up on the farm with no notice would this be a problem?  i would have told you that it most definitely would be.  That horses, even temporary horses, would be considered by some to be “high impact” guests and we would need to discuss it, zone it, come up with contingency plans and on and on.  Turns out i would have been wrong.  The horse which was only supposed to be here for a days, stayed several and no one seemed to bat an eye about it.  I must confess i am a bit surprised, but pleasantly so.

Sometime in past week we had a fairly major robbery.  Some unidentified person or persons went into the Tupelo music room and stole several thousands of dollars worth of community and individual instruments and musical equipment.  This is always painful for us.  We dont lock our place up, very few people in this part of rural Virginia do and it was a pretty daring robbery, because you have to drive all the way thru the community and the music room is actually occupied with chair shop workers much of the day, including odd hours at night.

Robberies always make us sad and a bit paranoid.  What stops them from coming in and taking something else?  We want to have musical instruments, but we dont want them stolen.  When i first came to the community we had the keys to our cars in the cars, then we had one stolen and we moved the keys out of the cars.  That car was recovered.  Overall all we have very low theft rates, especially when compared to the mainstream.  But this is of little solace to  the members who lost instruments which are very hard to replace.  There is talk of benefit concerts and other ways to try to replace these lost items.  And there is a feeling of being violated and less safe.