Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.
They don't exactly scream " Steal me!"
And yet, over the past three months, about 30 have quietly been filched from your quaint residential communities. Your parks and your grassy knolls. Unceremoniously ripped from the earth, leaving behind only a slab of concrete and questions. Why? Why us? Why now?
Dog waste receptacles. Metal boxes that provide discreet black plastic bags and a bin to throw them in, used.
Throughout the Las Vegas Valley, thieves of unknown persuasion have unbolted these contraptions from their anchors and fled. Collectively, about $15,000 worth of pooper-scooper receptacle s have been stolen from parks in Green Valley and Summerlin.
Typically the thieves leave the contents (meaning excrement) and run. Sometimes they haul the entire lot, which can weigh up to 70 pounds, says Gus Keyl , who sells the Dogi-Dogi brand waste disposal containers at his Henderson business, Oasis Products.
Keyl has placed about 500 Dogi-Dogi boxes throughout the valley over the past 14 years. This is the first time anybody has stolen his product s , and Keyl has his theories about who's behind it.
First and foremost: drug addicts. Thieves stealing the boxes to sell as scrap metal.
The first 25 or so boxes that were stolen were stainless steel and brand -new. These could fetch about $60 at a scrap metal recycler, Keyl says. A payment worth the weirdness of stealing dog waste containers, perhaps.
It wouldn't surprise Metro Lt. Robert DuVall if the boxes were stolen for scrap. DuVall heads the department's property crimes section, and as a rule, he says , no metal is really safe.
"Any kind of metal will effect a price," DuVall said, "and if you steal enough of it, you are going to get money."
An increasing appetite for scrap metal in developing countries has turned metal into gold of sorts . But stainless steel poachers are a first for the lieutenant.
"The things that are being stolen just boggle my mind," he said.
Keyl called around to local metal recyclers, but they all swore they never saw any of the huge hunter-green boxes , which feature a tail-wagging dog logo , come down the scrap line.
Not convinced, Keyl changed his strategy. He started making Dogi-Dogi boxes out of plain metal. These boxes would fetch only about $12 from a scrap recycler. Not enough money, Keyl thought, to justify the risk.
Four of the plain metal boxes were immediately stolen.
And since any enterprising criminal could easily differentiate between stainless steel and plain metal, Keyl had to assume the thefts weren't the work of scrap hounds.
Enter theory No. 2: A rogue lawn maintenance company is unearthing the boxes and planting them somewhere else, usurping Keyl's Dogi-Dogi empire.
"Some small company, pulling them out," Keyl said. "That's what we now are convinced of, more or less."
DuVall is unconvinced, believing it's the metal or nothing.
Ultimately, neither theory really makes sense. Because how can one make sense of stolen dog waste containers?
(By the way, if you know something that might bring the Dogi-Dogi theft epidemic to an end, Keyl has $1,000 for you.)
In the meantime, Keyl has spent $3,000 developing a new bolt, one that thieves theoretically won't be able to unscrew to remove the containers.
But thieves have already prove d they can take what's bolted down. And it's only a matter of time, DuVall said, until they move onto a new metal target.
"I am always left wondering what's next, " DuVall said. "There's nothing made of metal that's safe right now."
