While the big, bad wolf of government may have won this round, we would expect and hope to see an uprising of Orwellian proportions from the little piggies Roanoke Rapids City Council sees as unfit to be kept as pets inside its limits.

The big, bad wolf huffed and puffed at Tuesday night's council meeting, blowing the house of straw over with what we believe was simply irrational fear blocking the progress of a small business seeking to make it on Roanoke Avenue.

While there were some members of council who seemed to want to study the matter further, they made no effort to put a motion on the table to do so on an evening when revisions to the city ordinance were brought up for discussion for the first time.

While we typically respect Councilman Wayne Smith, particularly for his views on keeping the comings and goings of the Roanoke Rapids Theatre in the public view rather than behind closed doors, we have to differ with the councilman on this issue.

This issue is not about keeping Great Depression era hog pens in the backyard. This issue is not about pulling rotten pieces of a week's worth of vittles from the compost heap to slop the hogs. This is merely an issue about letting people who don't prefer to have dogs or cats have the opportunity to keep a miniature pig as a pet and love them like they would Fido or Fluffy.

We don't envision a city becoming overrun with pigs like in Animal Farm where they find two legs bad and four legs good, although at Tuesday's meeting the ones standing on two legs certainly made a bad decision. We envision a city where people who want to own something outside the norm have a chance to do so. We envision a city council which says it supports businesses which locate on the avenue to make it something special.

Council Tuesday night appeared to completely ignore the voice of Stacey Harrell, who runs S&L Pet Shop, and has been bombarded with questions on when the business can begin selling pigs.

That answer was given to her following a rash vote in which there was no talk of a compromise, no talk of saying let's just allow them to be kept inside and no offer to Harrell to take her up on her proffer to help the city draft an ordinance revision which will appease everyone.

That council is concerned about the plight of an overburdened animal control chasing stray dogs and cats is understandable, but in this issue it is merely an excuse which could be addressed by putting more teeth in the ordinance to clamp down on irresponsible pet owners like an aggressive dog.

Harrell has now stated publicly she is going to fight this and we believe she should because council, after her eloquent offer to help, stubbornly turned this matter down without giving her any consideration, essentially slapping her business in the face.

We sincerely hope Harrell and her supporters keep the pressure on council to make further revisions to this ordinance because, in the end, the big, bad wolf is not supposed to win — Editor