HOUMA -- In Houma, you cannot sell or possess Silly String within 300 feet of a parade route.

Those younger than 17 can’t have a laser pointer in Terrebonne, except in their homes, for appropriate use in a classroom or on a gun sight while hunting.

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Houma barber Clyde Scott was cited for cuttiing hair on a Monday.

And in Louisiana, it could cost you $500 in fines if you order a pizza delivery for a friend without the friend’s knowledge. The Bayou State also takes its alligators seriously.

You could spend up to 10 years in jail if you steal all or part of one that belongs to someone else.

Though these local laws seem odd at first glance, they originated for legitimate reasons, say local parish officials.

For instance, several years ago, kids were spraying horses and motorcycle-riding cops and Shriners with the sticky substance during Mardi Gras parades, creating the possibility for injuries, said Terrebonne Parish Council Clerk Paul Labat. So the council outlawed the novelty item on parade days.

About the same time, under Parish President Barry Bonvillain’s administration, parish attorneys began reviewing local laws to evaluate their relevance, Labat said.

The review is set to start again sometime this month. Once that process is complete, parish employees expect to report which local laws need tweaking, according to Parish President Michel Claudet.

The new review was prompted by Courier accounts of a local barber who was ticketed for cutting hair on a Monday. The decades-old law prohibits barbershops inside Houma’s city limits from opening on Sundays, Mondays and 11 other specified days, mostly holidays.

That’s the only law that parish officials say they are aware of that need changing, but they want to ensure that’s the case.

"Certainly we didn’t know there were these outdated ordinances or that they were trying to be enforced," Claudet said. "We should be ashamed, and I am ashamed."

Terrebonne Parish District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. has already asked the Parish Council to repeal the barber law. The council set a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. June 11 to get public input before making a decision on the law’s fate.

Terrebonne Parish Councilman Alvin Tillman followed that decision with a suggestion of his own during last week’s council meeting -- he asked that a committee of lawyers and public officials be convened to review parish laws.

Tillman said he’s not aware of any laws in particular that should be revoked, but he believes the council’s tendency to adopt laws as situations arise likely led to some outdated laws.

"When I first heard about (the barbershop law), it was kind of mind boggling that it was happening in this day," Tillman said.

But Claudet said he’d already directed Parish Attorney Courtney Alcock to begin leafing through the parish statutes.

"That’s fine with me," Tillman said. "I just want to see that it’s done."

Contacted by The Courier via e-mail, Alcock said she would probably ask various departments to review sections of the parish code that they deal with to ensure none of the laws are obsolete.

"Considering the code book is two volumes of over 1,000 pages each, there very well may be provisions that need to be repealed or revised," Alcock states in her e-mail.

Parish attorneys started the process of reviewing laws nearly six years ago because some laws might be outdated or cite state law that has since been amended, Alcock states.

Though she couldn’t cite the local laws changed during that review period, Labat said he remembers a few.

"There was one that made it illegal for people to wear hats in the movie theater," Labat said, adding that was repealed a couple of years ago. "It was adopted, I guess, when ladies wore big, big hats."

One law, no longer on the books, dated back to the 1800s and set a $10 bounty on tigers.

"You don’t see any more tigers, do you?" Labat said "That $10 made a difference."

Doing an occasional review, Labat said, is a good idea and one that should be continued.

"Maybe some parish governments 50 years from now will look at the baggy-pants ban," Labat said, referring to Lafourche Parish government’s recent prohibition on saggy pants.