Does a 25-foot-tall, 122-foot-long dinosaur need a permit to avoid extinction?
That's the unlikely dilemma posed by "Vermontasaurus," a whimsical sculpture thrown together with scrap wood by a Vermont man. The oddity now faces opposition from neighbors and regulatory challenges from government entities that he fears could force him to dismantle it.
It's art, not edifice, says Brian Boland.
"They should leave me alone. It's a piece of artwork," he said.
Boland, 61, is a former teacher, hot-air balloon designer and pilot who runs the Post Mills Airport, a 52-acre airfield.
Last month, he decided to turn a pile of broken wooden planks and other detritus on the edge of his property into something more. Boland says was the idea was to build a sculpture that could be a community gathering place, with no admission and no commercial element.
Using a dinosaur model as his inspiration, he put out a call for volunteer helpers and went to work.
He cut a huge pine tree into four pieces and, using a back hoe, planted them as the bases of the four feet. Then, over nine days and using dozens of volunteers, the ersatz sculpture began taking shape.
A splintered 2-by-4 here, the rotted belly of a guitar there, half a ladder from a child's bunk bed here, Boland and his volunteers worked under basic ground rules: No saws, no rulers and no materials other than what was in the scrap pile.
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Thoughts? Is it art, or an edifice? Should they leave him alone?
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