OWEN SOUND, ONT.—Is Grey County becoming the Bermuda Triangle of Ontario?

OPP in the county, situated on Georgian Bay, have investigated a number of strange thefts in recent years, including a life-sized horse statue, two porta-potties, nearly 100 bunnies and a double-wide mobile home.

Now they are investigating the serial theft of hydro poles that were clipped from their wires and stolen right out of the ground.

The thefts took place in two separate incidents about two weeks apart in the same location along a quiet rural road near the community of Maxwell, about 60 kilometres southeast of Owen Sound.

The first case was reported to police June 28. Three poles vanished from a work site after they were erected by Hydro One crews.

Police were called to the same location last Thursday after a Hydro One employee realized it had happened again. This time two poles had been disabled and removed. Made of pressure-treated wood, they are 12 metres long and worth between $600 and $700.

There are instances where people will return to the scene of an earlier crime and commit another offence, but the case of the missing hydro poles is particularly baffling, said Grey County OPP spokesperson Const. Alina Grelik.

“It is kind of bizarre, isn’t it?” she said.

A Hydro One spokesperson won’t discuss the latest pole crimes, citing the ongoing police investigation.

Grelik said it’s obvious that whoever is responsible — and she believes the two incidents are most likely the work of the same people — had access to heavy equipment capable of plucking the poles out of the earth. She didn’t know whether the poles had been anchored in place; dirt may have been the only thing holding them upright.

Assuming the poles weren’t chopped up at the scene, the crooks would have needed some kind of large transportation to move them.

It’s not clear if the bandits know enough about hydro transmission to have been able to cut the wires without suffering serious injury, or if they just got lucky. The wires weren’t live, but police say there could have been some phantom voltage that might have been harmful to whoever was doing the cutting.

Grelik wouldn’t comment on what use she thinks someone might have for the hydro poles, but there is a market for them. They can be turned into fences or clothesline posts, or they can be used in construction or landscaping.

A man was arrested and charged in June after another man found that his double-wide mobile home had been stolen from a property near Dundalk, about 50 kilometres northwest of Orangeville. The $30,000 home was found a short distance away in Proton Station.

A small wooden bear carving wearing a red scarf was stolen from outside a Grey Highlands home in April.

In March, someone made off with a 90-kilogram porta-potty that had been placed at the junction of ski trails near Bognor, 20 kilometres east of Owen Sound. One year earlier, another porta-potty was stolen from a snowmobile trail south of Chatsworth. Both toilets were owned by the same company.

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A rabbit farm near Owen Sound was hit three times in the span of a few months in the first half of 2009 by thieves who made off with almost 100 bunnies in total.

And several years ago, a full-sized fibreglass horse statue was taken from an equestrian training centre located between Owen Sound and Chatsworth.

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