BY DARRELL HALEN

It’s an unusual sight that can catch the attention of drivers traveling on Range Road in Windham: a rock whose shape is similar to that of New Hampshire.

About 13 years ago, Pat Boylan discovered the rock at a construction job site.

“This looks like New Hampshire so I brought it home,” he recalled. “It’s a conversation piece, that’s all it is.”

Located on his front lawn next to his mailbox, the rock is about 40 inches wide, and its top is about four-and-a-half feet from the ground. Boylan figures the rock weighs between 500 and 600 pounds.

When inviting friends over to his 251 Range Road residence for the first time, Boylan tells them to look out for two distinct features at his house: his large wood pile and the rock.

The rock is not a perfect replica of the state but its shape is similar to New Hampshire in some respects – the slope of the state’s western side, its northern tip, and its straight northeastern border.

Boylan jokes that he might put a star on it to mark where Concord, the state’s capital, is located.

After Boylan discovered the rock, fellow crew members helped him load it on a dump truck. At home, he dug a hole in his front yard and used ropes to position the rock into the hole.

“Hey, it’s character,” Boylan replied when his wife, Nancy, asked him why he brought it home.

The rock is about a foot deep into the ground, but leans when the ground gets wet. Boylan straightens it up.

Boylan’s unusual lawn ornament has drawn some good-natured ribbing from his next-door neighbor, Jim Hawko, who moved in around the time Boylan put the rock in.

“Most people just have a pet rock,” Hawko kidded him recently.

Hawko jokes that rock is actually the nose of the Old Man of the Mountain, whose profile collapsed in May 2003. But Boylan reminds him that he had the rock long before the rocks that made up the Old Man’s profile fell off the mountain.