What is the strangest thing you've heard of that was stolen?

Next week, I’m going to be a bag check lady for a charity event. I thought that was a nice thing to do because people would be buying stuff and wouldn’t want to carry bags of it around. NOPE!!! Its because people really do go to charity events and steal. :frowning:

After being told that, I remembered why the PetBox place I used to volunteer at chained their toilet brush to the toilet…it was because people would steal them. :eek:

So, what’s the weirdest thing that you folks have heard of being stolen?

When I lived in California, I planted a bougainvillea in my front yard (which was really just a small raised bed right by the sidewalk.) It was not a big plant, and cost probably six bucks. Next morning it was gone. Yep, someone dug it up. Funny thing is, those plants are very tricky to transplant if the roots get disturbed; it probably died.

Someone stole a Buddha from in front of a local Asian restaurant. That’s got to be some bad juju!

Some years ago, my sister, Scrub Jay, had Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck. One day, she bought a bag of mulch, stuck it in the back and failed to take it out in a timely manner. A couple of holes developed in the bag and out of one of them, grew a tree. For several years that tree went everywhere the truck did. It never grew higher than the roof of the cab and looked pretty much like the deciduous version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Scrub Jay would sometimes put fake apples and bows on it. Then one day, after two or three thousand miles of travel, the tree and the bag of mulch disappeared. Considering how weathered the plastic was, I’m surprised anyone could have moved it without making a huge mess, but move it they did. And successfully too.

I like to think someone took pity on the poor little tree and now it’s happily living in their back yard.

Someone dug up a bunch of hostas and peonies from up at our cabin. That isn’t too big of a deal (although the peonies were a partial transplant of a stand we’ve had for over 50 years).

My nephew built one of those wooden wishing wells for the front yard of this house (when my sister lived here) - it was pretty big, well over 400#. It was in the yard for a week when she woke up to find tire tracks in the yard and the wishing well gone. Personally, I would like to thank whoever took it, as I’m sure she would have left it when she moved out and I moved in - and I disliked the stupid kitschy thing.

We put a concrete water fountain in front of our office, about six feet in diameter with a beach-ball sized sphere in the middle. Nice, and probably weighed 600# easily. It more or less sat on the ground and just plugged in.

Gone the next day. It would have taken a whole crew of guys to get that thing. Pretty sure it is the front yard landscaping for some unknowing customer.

Security cameras (while they were in operation).

When I was 18 my boyfriend had a bunch of loser friends over and someone stole my (solid, kind of melted and gross) underarm deodorant.

Strangest stolen item in the news has to be this:

Long story short, some jackasses in Quebec stole a trailer that contained 2 camels and a tiger that were being transported between zoos. The keepers stopped at a motel for the night and when they went to check on the animals before bed the trailer was gone. (Trailer thefts were very common in that area.) It was in the dead of summer so while the camels would be okay without water the zookeepers were really worried that the tiger would get dehydrated and they appealed through the media for the “kidnappers” to at least give him water. They finally found them and the best part is they found a big bowl of Whiskas cat food with the tiger.

When I was 18 my house was robbed. They stole the only things of value in the house - mom’s diamond ring and dad’s baseball cards. And my brand new Airwalk sneakers, which cost like $80 at the time. They weren’t Air Jordan’s or anything. Jerks!

O J Simpson’s memorabilia.

Another Canada story: 6 *million *pounds of sticky gold. Canadian caries. Maple Syrup, that is. The Great Syrup Robbery.

Canada is obviously a hotbed of crime. Sweet, sticky crime.

My father had a old chest freezer he dumped in the front garden when he replaced it. He intended to get rid of it to the dump but hadn’t got around to it for a couple of weeks.

A mate of his visiting told he not to bother and sellotaped a notice to it reading, “For Sale £10. Knock at the House”.

It was stolen overnight.

When I took HS chemistry 61 years ago, the teacher told us about some dumb kid who had stolen a hunk of metallic sodium and stuck it in his pants pocket. When it had burned its way though his pocket and landed on his bare leg he had to 'fess up".

Hardly in the same class I bought 5 bags of black earth at the garden store last spring and piled them by the garage door. Next day there were only 3. They weighed 20 kilos each.

At my old workplace, the gift shop sold expensive fancy decorative potpourri. The manager would put out a package of the “scent of the month” in the restrooms. Yep - people would pick out all of the pretty bits on a fairly regular basis. If not nailed down, they’ll steal it. If nailed down, they are doubly motivated.

Years ago someone stole a chain I had hanging from my rear view mirror. It was an ordinary worthless chain that had a nickel with a hole in it and a pair of dog tags with my name and my dad’s name and rank (and maybe serial number, I don’t remember for sure) from when I was a baby.

Funny thing was, the only thing of any real value in the car was about half my comic book collection - 2 or 3 hundred comics in two boxes in plain sight in the back seat - and they were left alone.

Phone cord.

Back when I had an office job. The phone rang, my boss picked it up, said hello and heard nothing. The cord from the phone to the receiver had been stolen.

My sister’s loud, bad rear-end, rustbucket Ford Maverick which she bought for $200.

This was nearly 30 years ago and she was living in the Bronx at the time.

A McDonald’s around here used to have a statue of Ronald McDonald out front. My sister’s classmate said her brother and his friends stole the clown statue, but didn’t know what to do with it, so they shoved it into some bushes.

I had my house on the market. It was vacant, we’d moved elsewhere. One day someone stole all the window treatments. Which is nuts – they were “honeycomb” shades custom-cut for my windows, they wouldn’t fit someone else’s. And only a real estate agent would have had access to the house, so for some reason one of them decided to steal this stuff.

Probably tame and not that weird compared to others…but when I was about 14, I had my gf’s brothers over my house to visit (once). One of them winded up stealing an NES game from me. Wizards and Warriors 2.
I got it back eventually, after he copped to having taken it, but what I still don’t understand is this: I had over 200 NES games back then, most of them very popular and very good and WAYYYY MORE FUN than WaW II…and that’s the one you steal? :dubious: