This takes brass. (How low can you go?)

A few years ago someone stripped some brass/bronze markers off a wall near the Esplanade on Boston's Charles River. I can't recall what historic or heroic thing the markers commemorated, but they were kind of funky, and then they were gone. Hundreds of thousands of people walk by this wall when they come to the 4th of July concert, and now there are gaping scars where the markers used to be. The guess was that someone sold them for scrap.

Every once in a while, someone will steal one of the "Make Way For Ducklings" ducklings from Boston's Public Garden. But that's usually a college kid doing it as a joke, and Mack-Ouack-Pack or whichever of the duckling sibs goes missing gets returned to its rightful place.

Abandoned buildings have long been stripped of their fittings, including any copper piping.

And every once in a while there's a spate of brass door knocker thefts, where someone makes off with all those cool lobster and whales.

Wrought iron gets stolen with regularity - including off the front of buildings. Including from the place where I live, that had a couple of wrought iron faux porches stripped off many years ago, allegedly by a guy who did some work around the building. (We were never able to prove anything - and those faux porches still haven't been replaced. They sure were pretty.)

And, of course, there are those who take the flowers off of graves, which has happened to quite a few people I know, including family members. And which I've always thought was pretty darned low.  (Can you imagine spading up the geraniums that someone has just planted on Gramma's grave and moving them to your front yard? What goes on in people's heads?)

But, let's face it. Heinous as all of this behaviors are, they are innocent child's play compared with the latest:

Fire departments across the country report that thieves are twisting the brass nuts off the tops and selling them for scrap, raising concerns that the hydrants won't work when needed most. (This from a recent Boston Globe article.)

In California last spring, thieves had wrenched the nuts off of the five hydrants closest to a house on fire. The firefighters couldn't get the water they needed. As a result, the house was a total loss.

Some firefighters are now carrying spares to that they can use hydrants that might be tampered with.

What are the brass nuts from a single hydrant worth?

Apparently about $10.

Which means you have to go after quite a few hydrants if you want to make any kind of a haul.

If this keeps up, it's surely a matter of time before some out of commission hydrants factor in a death or two.

When that happens, I'm sure we'll have tamper-proof hydrants. Or security cameras mounted on every corner, as is happening in the UK.

But in the mean time, how rotten and desperate do you have to be that you're willing to endanger someone's life for $10 worth of brass hydrant nuts. (And just how rotten do you have to be if you're running a scrap yard and you're willing to take a bag of hydrant nuts from someone? They are pretty recognizable for what they are.)

Meanwhile, it's probably worth taking a look at your nearest hydrant to make sure it's still got all of its brass fittings.