Siphoning: High gasoline prices making people literally sick; gas thefts up

Glenview, IL, April 17, 2011

Besides causing hardship on people's checkbooks, skyrocketing gasoline prices are literally making people sick. The Omaha World Herald reports that the Nebraska Regional Poison Center has fielded at least a dozen calls from people who have accidentally swallowed or inhaled gasoline while siphoning from the tiny fuel tanks of their snow blowers to save a little bit of money.

Which reminds me that locked gasoline caps weren't common until the 1970s. When gas prices soared during that unhappy decade, scoundrels obtained siphon hoses and stole gasoline from other vehicles. It will start happening again--crooks will discover ways around locked caps. Escalation it's called, as Jim Gordon explained to the Caped Crusader at the end of Batman Begins.

Oh wait, siphoning thefts are already happening. Read about it here, here, and here. In the last incident, the thief drilled a hole into the fuel tank of a pickup truck.

Drill...metal...sparks...flammable fuel...very stupid.

But the Joker was crazy too.

Oh, when I say "Dril here, drill now," siphoning is not what I mean.

Technorati tags: Democrats economy Drill here, drill now government energy oil crime legal law news