A passing equestrian’s failure to clean up after her horse in the parking lot of a national big-box retailer has, within twenty-four hours, ascended to the position of most-discussed civic matter in the township, displacing several long-running concerns and prompting public comment from the mayor’s office, The Corn has confirmed.

The initial post, accompanied by photographic documentation, alleged that a woman riding a horse past the entrance of the retailer permitted her horse to defecate in plain view of shoppers, customers, and the front display of seasonal annuals (now reduced) and, when invited to clean up, “just laughed and went on her way.” The post received 115 reactions, including the laughing-face emoji, the heart, and the open-mouthed shock emoji, in roughly equal proportions, suggesting community ambivalence about what kind of feeling the situation should produce.

In the comments, residents organized themselves into three loose camps.

The first held that the incident represented a breach of the social contract and warranted a stern community response. This camp posted longest and most often.

The second held that no laws had been broken, that horses are permitted to use public roads, and that the situation was at worst a minor inconvenience and at best a charming small-town moment of the sort residents claim to want.

The third held that this is exactly what is wrong with the town now, and was previously not, and that things were better when children could play road hockey, which has not been mentioned in the original post or any of the prior 200 comments, but which the commenter had been waiting to bring up.

The mayor, replying directly on the thread approximately one day after the original post, observed that the leading civic complaint of the day in the township was horse-related sanitation at a chain retailer parking lot. “Not traffic. Not crime. Not politics,” the mayor wrote, alongside a laughing emoji and a brown emoji that does not bear close description. “Just someone yelling ‘please clean up after your horse.’ Honestly… I love this town.”

The mayor’s comment received 180 reactions and 36 replies, including several criticizing the mayor for not taking the situation seriously enough, and several others criticizing the mayor for taking it seriously at all by replying. One reply observed that the previous mayor would have handled the situation differently, without specifying which way.

The retailer, reached for comment, declined to participate in the discussion. The horse remained unidentified. The woman remained at large.

The annuals, by all accounts, were unharmed.