Marlborough Man With a Big Heart

    Two abandoned farm building sites on our land in South Dakota provided, what the law considers, 'attractive nuisances'.  Trespassers are tempted to explore the old, abandoned buildings and if they are injured while doing so we could be held liable.  Both sites had long been unoccupied; one since 1969 and the other since 1991.
    At the 1969 site there was a small silo, barn foundation...I had burned the barn a few years ago on a cold winter day...two cisterns, an abandoned well, a small house, and an unattached garage.     The 1991 site had a house and a barn that had collapsed a few winters ago under the weight of snow.
    I engaged a local contractor, a few years younger than I...isn't everyone?... to do the work. He looks a bit like the Marlborough man.  He began at the 1969 site.  One day, after he had begun work, he stopped by my garage in town where I was working on a tractor.  He reported that he'd buried the cisterns, barn foundation and silo.  The hole for burying the house and garage was also dug but now he was waiting.  He said "The garage is full of barn swallow nests and the babies haven't left the nest yet.  I won't bury the garage until they have left the nest."   He didn't expect me to understand...but, I thanked him for it,  I said "I feel bad that they won't have that as a nesting site next year."
   When the barn swallows left the nest and he'd finished burying the house and garage he moved on to the 1991 place.  With his excavator he dug a huge hole by the barn and with his caterpillar (he once let me try out his caterpillar) pushed the barn in and covered it up.  Then he dug a hole by the house but, when he began to lift the house, a large raccoon fled through the roof.  When he shut off the motor of the excavator he could hear baby raccoons in the house.  He investigated and found they were newborns.   So he went to town and consulted a veterinarian who suggested he put them in a box in the tree grove to see if their mother would return.  For three days he fed them cream with a syringe while waiting for the mother's return.  She did not return so he took them home and is raising them.
   Indeed, a man with a big heart!