Man Protesting Building Curbs Removes Pigs but Will Fight On

Psychologist Thomas Hefele has removed the 28 pigs he stabled behind his house in a protest over building restrictions. But his neighbors are still holding their breath, if not their noses.

“We’re not gloating,” said neighbor Russell Squires after a Superior Court judge ordered the pigs out. “We haven’t heard the last of him. We’ll see now if he brings in llamas, or those 25 caribou from the state of Maine.”

Nothing of the sort, Hefele said--just a few sheep and some Black Angus cattle.

Feeling the town had arbitrarily prevented him from building on his lots, Hefele turned his property this summer into a piggery. The neighborhood is zoned agricultural-residential.

The neighbors contended that they were being “held hostage” by the smell in order to get them to drop their opposition to Hefele’s building plans.

The Board of Health ruled the site inappropriate for a piggery, and Middlesex Superior Court Judge Andrew Meyer supported the board’s order.

Hefele, past president of the Massachusetts Psychological Society, said Friday that he has received letters of support from around the country from people who agree with his contention that it’s just good mental hygiene to fight back against those feelings of frustration and “assert your rights.”