A few years ago I read an article in New Scientist about a new hazard that was cropping up throughout England: open manholes in the streets. The manholes were open (and therefore hazardous) because people had taken to stealing the manhole covers to sell them as scrap metal. (The practice eventually found its way to the U.S.)
Ridiculous, I thought. How desperate for money can someone be that they are stealing a heavy piece of iron that isn't even worth that much as scrap?
Someone has taken to stealing wrought-iron gates from around Nanticoke.*
Nanticoke has a lot of old houses with old spiked wrought-iron fences with gates that make a happy crashshsh when they close. I have one. As of this writing, I have both a fence and a gate, though my gate is missing several of the spikes courtesy of the last tenant, who decided to secure the gate to keep his kids in the yard by wrapping a rubber strap around the gatepost and the gate. After a few years of this, the tension on the old spike that the strap was wrapped around was too much, and it snapped off. So he moved to a second spike. And then a third.
I have no idea how hard it is to remove one of these gates. If it's not too difficult - and, really, I think doing it would require a hacksaw or cutting torch, though professional thieves could probably do the job in under thirty seconds - and if it can be done in a way that doesn't permanently damage the fence, I'm thinking of removing it myself and storing it in my basement for the duration of the economic downturn. (I already took in my Arcosanti bronze windbell for similar reasons.) Once the weather warms up enough, I plan to repaint it with some identifying information added. At the very least I intend to take photos of it, to get "THIS GATE IS NOT FOR SALE" posters ready to distribute to all the local scrap metal dealers, just in case any of them are ethical enough to refuse to buy known or suspected stolen property.
I would not have thought it would come to this, but it has. I wonder how widespread this sort of thing is.
*It appears that England once again beat us to the punch:
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