Walnuts
If you thought the November theft of 140,000 pounds of walnuts from a California orchard was unusual, think again: the $400,000 nut-job was only the latest of many. Just a month earlier, about 12,000 pounds of walnuts worth $50,000 were stolen from a trailer parked just off a busy highway. So who’s squirreling away all these nuts? We can’t blame Chip & Dale this time – rising walnut prices have put this lucrative California cash crop on the radar of those who feel snatching copper is a bit too shocking.
Maple Syrup
What does a Canadian do just after he steals six million pounds of maple syrup? He takes off, eh! This particular case involved illegal “withdrawals” from the northern nation’s strategic maple syrup reserve (we kid you not) located in a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec. “In the States you have the strategic oil reserve,” explained Simon Trépanier, acting general manager of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. “Mother Nature is not generous every year, so we have our own global strategic reserve.” Suck it, OPEC.
Police believe the theft was an inside job that involved draining maple syrup from storage tanks and then refilling those tanks with water. Since watering down a law-abiding Canadian’s maple syrup is tantamount to blasphemy, police spared no expense in their effort to apprehend those responsible for the slow motion stick-up. In addition, the province’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “investigating what happened to the syrup after it slipped across the American border.” It would seem sweet justice is in the offing.

