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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. People will steal anything. Fiber Mixing Machine

And if there is one thing I can’t abide, it’s a low-down, no-good thieving son of a motherless goat. If that sounds like a line from an old western, I watch a lot of Starz Encore when I can’t stomach any more news from the talking heads.

Looking back over the years, I’ve written about quite a few sticky-fingered sons of chicken pluckers who have done me and mine wrong. These incidents include:

I reckon I could turn a blind eye to all the evil-doings these days, sit by the fire and keep these old bones warm while the coyotes sing in the distance, but that wouldn’t be the cowboy way, according to the last movie I watched on Starz Encore.

So, it’s time to saddle up and take another ride across the prairie of plunder and pilferage.

Our first stop is Park City, Utah, for some non-local larceny. There, police are looking for a bronze statue of a bear sitting on a bench drinking coffee – for the second time in five years.

“We are asking for the public’s help in finding a missing bear,” Park City police said in a Facebook post. “The bear is 3 to 4 feet tall, weighs about 60 pounds, likes to drink coffee and is loved by family and neighbors alike. This is the second time the bronze statue of a bear holding a coffee mug has been stolen. The first time was in October of 2018, but it was not recovered.”

According to the post, after the first one disappeared, the owner paid a Utah artist $8,000 to make another one, which tells me I should consider moving to Utah and going into the bear-making business.

No one ever said to me, “Hey, Scott, someone stole my newspaper. Can you make me another one for $8,000?

Now it’s time to mosey on home for this one: The theft of my common-law sister-in-law’s mail sack.

She totes the mail as one of the elite members of the U.S. Postal Service’s carrier team, delivering cards and letters to shut-ins and bank notices to those who had their personal information stolen to purchase mail-order brides from foreign countries.

As she was preparing to load up her truck or saddlebags or however they do it nowadays, someone stole her mailbag off the dock.

It had not yet been filled up with valuable letters addressed to current occupant or pizza coupons, but she was nonetheless upset at the brazen nature of this crime on federal property. Like the Park City, Utah, police, she took to Facebook, assuring the culprit that a police report was in the works. Believe me, crossing that little lady is like poking a rabid bobcat with its tail on fire.

As of this writing none of the no-account, yellow-bellied gizzard-lickers responsible for these crimes have been brought to justice. We just might have to round us up a posse.

But for now, all this talk of thievery has put a burr in my saddle. I wonder what’s on Starz Encore.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C., and a humor columnist for Lee Newspapers. Contact him at rhollfield@mcdowellnews.com.

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