Weird heists

When Bert Cooper surveyed the backyard of his Manitoulin Island property a few months ago, he was stumped: Someone had stripped the bark off his birch trees.

At first, it looked as though the culprit hit only a handful of trunks. But as the 78-year-old walked along his property, on the island that borders Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, he saw that the bark bandit was efficient and methodical — about 120 birch trees had the same two-to-three-foot section uniformly cut out.

"It was so disgusting," he told the CBC.

Cooper isn't the only victim of this curious caper. His neighbours have since had their trees stripped, too.

Bud Hebner of Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources says these thefts are becoming more commonplace. He believes the burglars are using the birch bark for crafts, as the unique texture of the bark is increasingly in demand.

Most people picture century-old paintings, jewelry and cash as typical targets of an elaborate heist. But thieves have branched out. From birch bark to beer, or in some cases even parrots and pigs, there's been some peculiar pilfering.

Sometimes the swindlers seek to capitalize on a high commodity price, which is what appears to be driving copper theft at construction sites and buildings all over Canada. In other cases, such as a slew of gory body-part thefts in New York City, the thieves are trying to fetch high profits on a very specialized black market.

In any event, there have been some very weird heists of late. Here is a partial list.

Commodity Capers

Copper: Record-high prices for metals have sparked a slew of copper thefts across the country in recent years, and seemingly everything is fair game — even the statue of a national hero.

In July 2007, vandals tried several times to decapitate a bronze statue of Terry Fox in his hometown of Prince George, B.C.

Local RCMP believe the thieves intended to sell the curly-haired bust for scrap metal. Even churches aren't sacred ground, as four in Quebec were stripped of their copper roofs and gutters in May 2006. That same month, a man in Langley, B.C., was electrocuted when he cut through a high-voltage line at a power substation. He was suspected of attempting to snatch the lucrative copper wiring. More than 40 similar theft attempts in Nova Scotia prompted the power authorities to issue a public safety warning last year to stay away from hydro substations.

Wood products: Birch bark has become a big seller of late. On eBay.ca, almost 200 products use the white-and-brown-speckled strips for such items as lampshades, chandeliers and jewelry boxes.

Birch trees aren't the only targets. In June 2007, about 15 towering western red cedars growing on a tree farm just west of Victoria were stripped, according to The Globe and Mail. Bark six to seven metres long was lifted from the trees, leaving the trunk vulnerable to disease and pest infestations.

Police suspected it was someone looking to make items to sell to the influx of tourists wanting souvenirs. The West Coast's aboriginal peoples have used red cedar bark for hundreds of years to make ropes, mats, baskets, rain hats and clothing.

Beer: You would think it would be fairly difficult to pilfer 110,000 bottles and cans of beer and not get caught. But in the early hours of Sept. 19, 2007, thieves drove right to a Toronto-area factory, hitched two trailers full of brew to tractors and hauled them right off the lot.

The beer bandits made off with more than $200,000 worth of Moosehead lager. Police recovered the trailers two days later. One trailer with 70,000 cans of the lager appeared untouched, but about 44,000 bottles had been cleared out of the second trailer.

It was the second time in three years the popular Canadian brewery was targeted. In August 2004, a truck carrying 50,000 cans to Mexico was heisted. About 14,000 were recovered.

Transport trucks: The huge haul from a single transport-truck theft makes it tempting to thieves, and the Ontario Trucking Association says it's becoming a serious problem for the industry. A recent association report estimates that the losses across North America from transport-truck thefts exceed $10 billion each year.

"Today, anything and everything is being stolen and subsequently sold — coffee, orange juice, clothes, toys and the list goes on," the report reads. The trucking association says that while petty thieves keep some of the booty for personal, others cases are heists that are part of "the arsenal of organized crime."

Body parts: Imagine discovering that pieces of your late loved ones were being sold, without your knowledge or consent. That's what hundreds of families in New York discovered in 2005.

The bodies of hundreds of people, including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke, were secretly carved up in the back rooms of funeral parlours across the city without permission. Bone, skin and tendons were then sold for profit, authorities say, and some of the illicit tissue might have made its way into Canada.

Long hair: In a less gory, but equally personal, crime wave, long-haired women in Brazil were being targeted for their locks in the early 1990s.

Women would be standing on busy street corners when amateur thieves would grab them and lop off their locks using anything from dull knives to the jagged edge of a broken bottle.

Crime analysts at the time suspected the human hair was destined for high-end wigs on the black market. A shoulder-length wig made from real human hair can cost up to $1,400.

HIV vials: Some body booty is so bizarre that there appears to be no clear purpose or feasible explanation for the heist. That was the case with 19 vials of HIV-infected blood snatched from a B.C. hospital in April 2006.

Someone pried open a padlocked freezer on the sixth floor of St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver to take the plasma. Each vial was labelled with a patient's name and HIV status. Hospital officials downplayed the risk to the public, saying the virus can only live for 72 hours outside the body or a cold-storage facility. Neither police nor the hospital would speculate on the thief's motives, and all 19 vials were eventually recovered.

Pigs: How many pigs can you fit into a compact car? About 22, as two thieves in New Brunswick found out in July 2007.

RCMP arrested the pair, suspected of stealing 22 pigs from a barn near Sussex, N.B. The two, from Petitcodiac, ages 19 and 20, are alleged to have used one small car to transport the pigs, which each weighed between 23 and 27 kilograms.

"This little car they transported them in once had like 22 pigs," Const. Jim Gass told CBC News. "Man, it wasn't a lot of room in the car. She would have been a noisy affair, I would imagine, and quite a wild ride. Something you see in the movies."

Police weren't able to recover all of the swindled swine — the suspects are alleged to have eaten one that night. At $75 a pig, the pirated porcines were worth roughly $1,650.

Parrots: A parrot pillage in Long Island, N.Y., on Aug. 14, 2007, was much more profitable. Forty-five parrots were taken after the back window of the Parrots of the World shop was broken into between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. The bird bounty was worth roughly $58,000, police estimated.

Lawn ornaments: Even a grandmother's garden-gnome collection isn't safe. Igne Glasgow looked out the window of her Edmonton home in June 2000 to discover all 30 dwarfs were missing from her yard. She had collected the outdoor ornaments for more than 30 years. Many of them came from as far as Germany.

A Lethbridge, Alta., man had a similar experience during the holiday season in 2006, but with a much happier ending. Two of Shawn Stickel's home-made, life-size cutouts of cartoon characters were stolen from his Christmas display in December. Stickel was so dismayed, according to the Lethbridge Herald, that he didn't bother putting up the other 70 hand-made cutouts.

But, on Jan. 5, 2007, the thieves must have been struck with a little seasonal spirit, and they returned the goods. Stashed in a garbage bag behind his home were Cindy-Lou Who and Max the dog, both from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.