I envy the gall...

of a thief. I am enamored of anyone with so little anxiety - the prototypical sociopath.

Someone cut all of the wires off of my camper in the past week or so to get the copper. He (or they) cut the wires from three other campers on our mountain. He has also harvested copper wiring from some, perhaps many, houses in the area. Most boldly, I'm told, he felled trees to knock down power lines, and cultivated wire from that source. (I'm not certain power lines are copper, but our thief probably is not an electrical engineer.)

My Grandfather said, "A lock stops an honest thief." There are at least two types of thieves: those who steal because they can, and those who steal because they must. Some steal to get food; others steal because no one is looking. (This categorization omits the professional adventurer.)

I have hired a number of people from the area. I have sought help for various projects for several years. It is difficult to find people who want to work. I don't think most people steal - even most lazy people. But thieves who refuse available work earn no mercy.

The Cherokee County North Carolina police received a lot of press, and great accolades, a few years ago after their fortuitous, if accidental, capture of Eric Rudolph - the Olympic Bomber. He is alleged to have spent the better part of a decade "hiding" there. The current epidemic of destruction and theft of property has become clearly and well known to them.

Perhaps there would be limited incentive for the police to allocate appropriate and sufficient resources to solve such a case if it were only the personal property of a few snow-birds and rural folk located 25 miles from town. I have never seen the Cherokee County police within miles of my place -- except once when I called them. But this situation is a pretty substantial and wide-spread problem. I hope the attack on the other subdivisions and communities, and on the power company, will be sufficient to cause the police to engage.

I am pretty angry about the damage to my property. I would hate to think how I would react if I ever caught someone in the act.

It would be good
        not
      to have
   a gun
if I did.



Post-Script: Only a few hours after I posted this article, I have learned via telephone that a cabin in our mountain subdivision has burned down. The police and fire department were still on the scene around 11:00 PM EST, according to friends in the area. There is nothing left of the cabin.

I know of no reason to suspect any linkage with the copper thief.