Rooster lawn ornaments aren’t passing muster in pricey Maine beach town

by Ted Cohen

After moving from Vermont to Maine to buy a breakfast joint, Sara and Dave LeBlanc find themselves in a real cockfight.

The couple, who run a place called the Omelette Factory in Ogunquit, Maine, and still own a Vermont business, bought a couple of metal rooster statues to decorate their new Maine establishment.

But the Ogunquit code officer cried fowl, claiming the roosters are unpermitted signs. Seems the stiffs in prissy Ogunquit don’t allow roosters to double as signs.

So the cock of the walk cited the LeBlancs for having illegal signs he deems as advertising, not artwork.

The couple says they actually bought the roosters to help their autistic 5-year-old daughter, who, well, feels a certain calm when she gets to “hide”in the roosters’ plumage.

“That’s her comfort space,” Sara LeBlanc told the local Maine paper, Foster’s Daily Democrat.

Comfort space be damned, the code enforcer deemed them inconsistent with Ogunquit’s sign restrictions.

The LeBlancs are appealing the fine they were issued, insisting the 6-foot-tall roosters are harmless.

The couple moved to Ogunquit, which was always one of their favorite vacation spots, last year from their home in Vermont after adopting Pyper, hoping to give her a better quality of life. They took over the Omelette Factory so they could live closer to the ocean, which they believed would benefit their daughter.

“Pyper is our daughter, whom we adopted, born under the worst circumstances,” Dave LeBlanc said. “We made it our mission to change that for the better.”

Roosters were already meaningful to Pyper back in Vermont, where the family kept gardens and ran childcare programs they still operate today, according to Sara LeBlanc.

Pyper has collected rooster items since she was a baby – a constant in her life, which Sara says is especially important for children with autism. Pyper even has a favorite T‑shirt with a rooster on it that reads, “We always come back.”

“It’s always been a part of wherever we’ve been, her and her birds,” Sara LeBlanc said.

Sara and Dave five years ago co-founded Next Generation, a group of childcare sites and affiliated schools throughout Vermont that they still run in South Burlington, Williston and Georgia, a town in Franklin County.