When I worked in a zoo, we had someone break into the shop, and steal; all the pewter animal figurines (presumably under the impression that they were silver), several t-shirts with the zoo’s logo on and about 20 bottles of local non-alcoholic fruit punch.
I’ve also had someone nick the licence plate from my car- just the front plate though, not the back one…
tenents in my rent house took two of the wheels off the bottem rack of the dishwasher. They trashed the place pretty good but that is the only things that theyactually took.
After calling in the first one, and nobody coming out to investigate we figured screw it. We called once, the cops obviously didn’t figure people chopping cars were not worth bothering about.
It’s a matter of donating the body to science/medicine, I’ve no idea how you’d calculate the price. It’s certainly legal though. Amusingly, there was another news story about a doctor with a box of frozen severed within a week or so of that one; in the other story the doctor in question was stopped by a cop who found the box and opened it. The doctor said he didn’t realize until later how much the cop must have been freaking out to find a guy with a box of heads.
A few months back, my girlfriend’s apartment was broken into. While pillaging one room, the guy evidently grabbed a jewelry collection off a shelf…
…and moved it out of the way so he could reach a jar of change.
I’ve heard of this happening too. My guess is that the thief knew the money was real.
When I worked in a wrecking yard, if it took over 8 minutes for us to pull an engine, my boss had a cow!! If needed, cut the drive line, the wiring, the exhaust and the engine mounts. Use a cutting torch for the steel and a knife or diagonal cutters for everything else. My personal best time, was for a Ford 302 in a Falcon, it was 4 minutes 23 seconds. I initiated the use of pruning shears for wiring harness, metal lines, power steering, fuel, and transmission cooling lines. We always pulled the transmission with the engine. The way we got the fuel for the wreckers was to put a large flat pan under the car and the poke a hole in the gas tank with an axe or a pick.
I can see a team of thieves pulling an engine in even less time. One to get the chain hooked up, while two more (one to a side) get the engine mounts, exhaust, dive lines, and control rods. They then cut lines as the engine is raised with the hoist. With a crew of six? I would guess a car could be stripped in under four minutes. I can see the thieves taking the radiator out with the engine. They will also want the catalytic converter. The thieves do not risk getting charged with “Grand Theft, Auto” they can only be charged with a lesser crime. Thus, they get less jail time if they are caught. This also explains the lack of interest to the police on this kind of a call.
If you want to see this for yourself, go to a wrecking yard and ask to watch them pull an engine. Similarly, the scrap metal yard here has a station that they use to strip a car before crushing. Two men pull the battery, radiator, air conditioner condenser, all fluids, tires, catalytic converter, and any miscellaneous parts that they have a need for, all in under 10 minutes tops.
My personal top speed in removing and replacing a VW beetle engine (air-cooled) is right at twenty minutes. That is from drive in to drive out. I used to race them a bit. My brother was faster!
mrAru could pull, rebuild and replace the engine in our 74 not-a-SuperBeetle in 4 hours flat if he bought the rebuild kit ahead of time. It took him half an hour to remove the engine from my 79 IH Scout, and a couple hours to put a replacement one in, get it all hooked up, and ready to roll. For someone who doesn’t work on cars, he is actually pretty decent at doing stuff on our older vehicles. He will do basic tune ups, oil changes and brakes on the VWs, but nothing elaborate has needed doing. Right now we have a project momvan we bought last fall about this time for me to potter around in that he is working on. It wasn’t too bad, for $2500 - 2006 Grand Caravan with an excellent body, interior and engine, but some subsystems that were not working correctly that were an easy fix, next thing is replacing the sound system - a couple of speakers have died and I want something I can jack my ipod or maybe a thumb drive in.
As far as the OP, Once in Portland Oregon, my wife and I went to visit a friend at his apartment. We were delivering the Christmas cookies that my wife makes. At the first of two stops, while we were in my friends apartment, someone broke into my locked pickup and stole the other container of cookies. They set aside two of my $200.00+ Snap-on torque wrenches to get to the large Tupperware container holding about three dozen cookies.
The wrenches were in their bright red plastic containers with Snap-on embossed on them. They had been sitting on top of the Tupperware behind the seat in my VW rabbit pick-up. I checked after we got home to see if the Tupperware was visible from the outside of the truck, and it was…just barely. One had to look through the back window from the opposite side. I guess that the thief was really hungry that day!
We discovered the theft at the next stop. Our other friends were very disappointed about the cookies. We brought them some more cookies three days later.
Vee Dubs are easy to work on and, IME, last a long time.
Oh yeah! a Scout! I always liked them and, if I did not have so many VWs and Willys, I would probably have a Scout of that vintage.
As far as MrAru, he is a handy man to have around. You are fortunate. Keep him!
MrAru, I’m pullin for you! Keep it up, 48.
Same thing happened to me. Except in my case its not the thing stolen that was strange but the thieves.
Baboons. My first car was burgled by baboons. I discovered my car sans antenna, covered in sand and muddy little baboon footprints. The troop in question was still around but I didn’t see my antenna and I wasn’t about to fight for it even if I did.
There is a large mansion that used to be owned by the Lamberts of Warner-Lambert that over looks Paterson (where his silk mills used to be). Its 3/4 of the way up the side of Garrett Mountain. On the first floor, there is a huge balcony with a view from the Goethels Bridge (south) full-panorama north past the GWB, and around to see the entirety of the city of Paterson. On this marble balcony are 6 rip-spots in the stone.
I know what used to be there because I saw it once at a kid: a full-sized dining room table carved from solid marble with a solid marble chair on each end. The table top? 10-12 inches thick. The table legs? They had the diameter of Doric Columns of a Greek Revival style library and were 3 or so feet high under each corner. At each end? Solid marble comfortable chairs carved from one piece of stone each. (They really were comfortable too; I sat on one as a kid). The weight alone staggers my mind; I’m guessing between 1 and 2 dozen tons of stone, grand total. The last time I visited, when I saw them gone, I was shocked and made sure to ask what happened.
“Oh, we don’t know. They were stolen over a holiday weekend one year and no one saw anything.” :smack:
I can’t express the steepness of the hill, the total lack of tree cover, and the single long winding cobble-stone driveway that leads to that mansion house. A moving van would stand out, but this would have required several cranes with the strongest boom-arms made just to lift. Or maybe a Huge Sikorsky, as quiet as those things are. And it would have required a cutting team on the ground just to get all of the parts in good condition (and evidently they did).
But how in the name of Og do you steal 20+ tons of marble artwork (it was that beautiful) from the side of a mountain, above the 4th most populated city in NJ, over a holiday weekend, without anyone seeing Anything…? :dubious:
My wife got mugged by a gang of monkeys.
She was walking through the “monkey forest” in Ubud, Bali, which is inhabited by many human-habituated monkeys. He had gone shopping and had bought a brightly colored mobile of carved fish, and was carrying this in a bag. Walking through the forest, she was surrounded by a monkey gang that must have thought the fish were something tasty. While two big monkeys threatened her with their teeth, the others ripped the bag out of her hand and trashed it - only to throw the fish on the ground in dissapointment.
That was how we learned why, when walking through the monkey forest, it was a good idea to carry a rock in one hand. Monkeys don’t bother you if you are carrying a rock. 
That wasn’t the worst example of monkey trouble we saw in that forest BTW. Worse happened to a long-haired chap with braids who was feeding the little buggers bananas. He let one cute little monkey climb up onto his shoulder - only to have the little bastard grab his braids in its hairy fists and ride him, bronco-style, around the forest, while the woods echoed to the poor man’s screams as the wee monster tugged - hard - on these improvised reins - every time the fellow tried to pluck his tormenter off, the monkey bit at his hands (and they have some serious teeth!).
Lacking a viable dining room, my wife and I used to eat while sitting on our sofa with our plates on the coffee table.
If we left our places unattended for a moment, our beloved Old English Sheepdog would steal and eat the paper napkins off the table, leaving the plate of food untouched.
My vehicle was broken into and the only thing taken was a reusable grocery shopping tote bag, value 49 cents.
Before we were married, my wife had her apartment broken into, and all they stole was a can of frozen orange juice. They trashed the whole place, but that was all they left with.
The detective told her that people with valuable jewelry will fill a can with water, drop in the jewelry, and then freeze it for safekeeping. Trouble is that my wife didn’t have any valuable jewelry then. She does now, but we also have a really loud dog.
Regards,
Sho-damned
“…and one of them is smoking weed!”
They’d be there in 30 seconds.
Damned screwed up priorities…
Ninth grade gym class, someone stole my nasty, sweaty jock-stap out of my locker, leaving my other nasty gym clothes there. I have to assume some poor nerd ended up wearing it on his head at some point. Why else would anyone steal a used jock?
My mom moved back in with my dad even though they’re not married anymore, because my mom is poor and works at Subway and can’t pay her bills. Before that, she was living at my grandma’s old place, having inherited it when she died, and she left a lot of stuff there when she moved.
Anyway, it turns out some druggies from the trailer court next door were breaking into my mom/grandma’s house for who knows how long. But they took the stupidest things.
Did they steal my grandpa’s extensive gun collection, or his collection of rare coins? No. Did they steal expensive electronics, like the TV, stereo, or my mom’s CD and DVD collections? The antique furniture? No.
However, they stole some of my grandma’s worthless ceramic knicknacks, some of my mom’s old love letters from high school, and all of mine and my siblings baby teeth! They took my mom’s collection of locks of hair from when her kids were toddlers! Sentimental crap that nobody but my mom and our family would find valuable.
Fuckers. I hope they all OD on krokodil.
A) If you’re going to wear it, why make yourself have to freeze it every time? and
B) If you’re not going to wear it, stop being weird and RENT A SAFETY DEPOSIT BOX!
I’ve never put anything valuable in the freezer. I don’t understand why people do.
