Cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right

A story in today's Press provides another example of why New Jersey is a wonderful place to live: You're allowed to shoot a cannon on your farm and the neighbors can't do a thing about it, as Colts Neck farmer John Samaha found out recently when the courts ruled that he can continue to fire off his Thunderbird Scare-Away cannon to shoo birds away from his corn.

Seems like birds aren't big fans of the 1812 Overture and tend to flee at the sound of the explosion. At least one of Samaha's neighbors is something of a philistine as well, and went to court to prevent the guy from using the liquid propane noisemaker.

As a nonfarmer, a cannon to scare crows strikes me as a typically American sledgehammer solution to a rubber mallet problem. But if you take cannons away from the farmers, only those wacky Civil War re-enactors will have cannons, and nobody wants that.

Also, it's not like Mr. Samaha is shooting off his cannon willy-nilly or even every day, just when the big balloon scarecrows don't work. Plus, he's not allowed to fire the cannon until a half-hour after the sun comes up, which means the landed gentry nearby can get their beauty sleep.

Here's a big, noisy salute to farmer Samaha and his battle against the birds.
Read the story at: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060412/NEWS/604120438