Have you ever walked down a street and noticed that all the houses look alike? Perhaps the children aren’t all skipping rope and bouncing balls in rhythm, but “the small square boxes painted gray” aren’t so far from those eerily described in A Wrinkle in Time. Have you ever wondered what would happen if one of those houses were different? If an owner, by accident or plan, made their gray box into something else?

If you were thinking a lawsuit would result, you’d be right. That’s exactly what happened in the California town of Hillsborough after Florence Fang, the owner of the Flintstone House, added a few metal dinosaurs among other yard decorations, making the property look even stranger than its brightly painted concrete domes already did.