80,000lbs of Walnuts Purloined In Northern California

Penurious Penguin writes "While not quite as epic or bitter as losing 600 barrels of maple syrup — in two separate heists, 80,000lbs of walnuts have been stolen in Northern California since last week. The heist was discovered after the walnuts failed to reach their destinations in Miami, FL and Dallas, TX. If you happen to see a large man (approximately 6' 2") driving a white semi-trailer and munching on $300,000 worth of walnuts, it may be the villain. Officers with highly trained squirrels have yet to be posted at interstate weigh-stations."

Comments

That's nutty!

[java_dev]

Thank you, I'll be here all week!

Re:That's nutty!

[roc97007]

...and I will be somewhere else...

knock, knock

[badford]

who's there?

Walnut.

Walnut Who?

Walnut too strong, don't lean on t.

(hahahahaha. I crack myself up. get it? walnut? *crack* myself up? come on! )

I smell onions?

[drcheap]

What is this place, The Onion?

Okay, so maybe it really did happen...why the F is it on ./?

Nerds could care less about a truckload of nuts.

Re:I smell onions?

[drcheap]

./

lol
oops

Might as well be called that anyway ;)

"Dotslash, news about nuts, not that it matters."

Re:I smell onions?

[ThatsMyNick]

It is a good article to submit to slashdot. Everyone can use a good laugh. I would have expected the editors to have posted it in idle, rather than YRO though.

Re:I smell onions?

[king neckbeard]

Between this and the maple syrup theft, there is obviously a comic book supervillain on the loose. Thus, it's comic book news, which is news for nerds.

Re:I smell onions?

[Artifakt]

You put this together with the theft from Canada's Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve and it starts forming a pattern, a pattern that says, to the trained eye, that these are steps in some mad scheme, some mad scheme which will eventually show itself to the general public in the form of gigantic robotic myrmidons armed with razor edged walnut waffle of death dispensers on every street corner as some spurious "Doctor" or "Professor" hijacks the media to present his ultimatum to the good people of Apple-Pie-ville and the rest of the world. That's news for nerds in a nutshell, baby!

Re:I smell onions?

[AK Marc]

When 100,000 gallons of pancake mix is stolen, we know he's trying to take over the world with walnut pancake robots.

Re:I smell onions?

[wonkey_monkey]

Nerds could care less about a truckload of nuts.

So they do care, then?

This is modern terrorism.

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Hitting America where it hurts....the nuts.

Re:This is modern terrorism.

[jaymzter]

Sounds like a hard nut to crack. Especially since there seems to be a wave of sorts going on:

Eight people were arrested Friday morning for attempting to steal 700 pounds of walnuts from an orchard west of Porterville, the Tulare County Sheriff's Department said.

About 10 a.m. the sheriff's department received a call about a theft in progress at the corner of Avenue 152 and Road 208 and arrived in time to stop the would-be walnut robbers. The walnuts were recovered at the orchard. Some were already loaded in three vehicles, the sheriff's department said.

The owner said he did not give anyone permission to remove walnuts from his orchard. They were valued at $1,020.

Re:This is modern terrorism.

[sconeu]

Damn, all these jokes just write themselves, don't they.

Unfortunately, they were written by slashdotters instead.

Re:Ok.. Seriously!!

[hutsell]

Who would you go to to fence something like that?

No fencing required; obviously this a conspiracy. Here's a quote from The Straightdope:

"Authorities believe the culprit is the same person who also picked up another load of walnuts days earlier from Los Molinos. Those walnuts were intended for Texas, but also disappeared."

Is it an agent working for China, the largest producer of walnuts, next being the U,.S., wanting to control the Great Paper Tiger?
Could it be someone trying to beat the commodities market pricing for walnuts, to cover a loss or to make a profit?

If it turns out to be either one of those, I will ... laugh-out-loud.

Re:Ok.. Seriously!!

[jd2112]

"Authorities believe the culprit is the same person who also picked up another load of walnuts days earlier from Los Molinos. Those walnuts were intended for Texas, but also disappeared."

Good. There's enough nuts in Texas already. At least they weren't headed to California.

Re:Ok.. Seriously!!

[Penurious Penguin]

I find it suspicious that your UID ( hutsell ) is merely an "n" away from a permuted nutshell. Who are you working for?

Paulie Walnuts

[dsavitsk]

From Wikipedia; "Paulie got his nickname 'Paulie Walnuts' due to hijacking a truck in the early 1990s which he believed to be filled with television-sets, but only contained walnuts."

Re:Paulie Walnuts

[thej1nx]

I know the next big heist that is going to happen. Tonnes of salt is about to go missing next!

How do I know this, you ask? That is because, I have deciphered the nefarious plans of this master-villain!

He is making a lifetime-supply of maple glazed walnuts!!!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/maple-glazed-walnuts-recipe/index.html

Fruit Thieves

[ShakaUVM]

A friend of mine owns 50 acres in the Central Valley. He used to grow citrus on it to pay the property tax on it.

Then one morning he gets a call, heads out to the farm, finds all 50 acres had been harvested in the middle of the night.

Across the street, there were some pretty ballsy guys selling what were very likely his oranges. The cops didn't do anything ("Can you prove they're your oranges?"). He just wanted to hire them to harvest his farm for next year - it took his normal contract labor something like a week to do the same job.

A good start

[uvajed_ekil]

Man, I hate me some walnuts. They don't add anything to the food they are used in, they get stuck in my teeth, and they taste bitter. I wish somebody would steal ALL of them, and get into a huge fireball of a wreck on the highway (with no one hurt, of course). Now, if this were about pecans I might actually give a shit. Pecan pie season is upon us!

BTW, I saw a couple of pretty shady looking squirrels apparently making some sort of deal this morning.

It's obvious...

[SeaFox]

Someone must be planning to get on Santa's good side with a reeaally big plate of cookies.

Be on the lookout for future heists of butter, sugar, flour, raisins, rolled oats in the next few weeks.

Sounds silly but an increasing problem

[caseih]

The theft of bulk food commodities is becoming more and more of a problem with commodity prices climbing. Even in more traditional areas like grains such as wheat. Most farms, if they don't sell or ship off the combine store their grain in bins or silos sometimes for months, and sell it and ship it slowly. Right now I am looking out my window at a row of shiny bins that hold a crop worth between $100k and $200k per bin depending on how much is in the bin (worth that to me; worth ten times that to the company that I grew under contract for). We actually put padlocks on the bottoms of our more expensive crop bins. Won't keep out a very determined thief, but it will hopefully provide a bit of a pause.

Recently a trucker told me he was hauling out of a remote bin for a farmer. Because it was quite hassle to put the auger in the bin to unload, once he was set up he just left it set up, and would come about twice a day for loads. During that time someone came along with a truck and helped themselves to a load. The bin was about 15 tonnes short; exactly one small truck load. So after that he started taking the belts with him, and disabling the auger's engine. Not a lot of money was lost (this was wheat after all... only between $3k and $4k), but not a happy thing for the trucker who had to make up the difference.

So yes, theft happens in bulk, and it can be a lot of money. Sounds funny, or nutty, but still a serious concern.

Re:Sounds silly but an increasing problem

[jimicus]

How does a thief get rid of 15 tonnes of grain? Can you just show up at a processor and say "Will you buy this truckload of wheat off me?"?

Re:Sounds silly but an increasing problem

[Anonymous Coward]

easy, you just add it to a larger, legit wheat load that you were about to sell anyway

Recipe's third ingredient exposes dastardly plan

[girlinatrainingbra]

There are too many possible recipes that use maple syrup and walnuts. It may, however, be possible, to infer what the evil villain's dastardly plan once we learn what the third batch ingredient heist is.

If it had involved eight large tankers of oil (one each of lime, cassia oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, coriander oil, neroli oil, and lavendar oil, plus 3 tankers of food grade gum arabic , then there plans would be obvious:

They're planning on making industrial quantities of Open Cola , and they know all of the ingredients of the GPL'ed recipe for open cola from OpenCola. Next they'll be stealing a large tanker of vinegar and a large truck with calcium-carbonate in order to create the vast quantities of fizzy water to reconstitute with the syrup.

Where to sell?

[Arakageeta]

The thief will have to sell the goods on the black walnut market.