In every issue of this fine rag my hack team of wannabe journalists and I tackle some of the most laughable criminal acts that have recently happened in our area. Then - if we're doing our job - we write about those crimes in a way that makes you chuckle, or at the very least helps you obsess about something other than the 27 pounds you need to lose before fitting into last year's bathing suit.

It's not the most important job, but someone has to do it. At the Weekly Volcano Crime Desk, along with managing the TiVo, it's our life's work.

This week's column takes us to Cashmere, Washington - a place we'd only go with good reason.

Enjoy. - Matt Driscoll

Drug-seeking tendencies can run the gamut. There's run-of-the-mill stuff, like pocketing some of your senile grandmother‘s Percocet; and there's the more dramatic stuff, like that creepy Drug War commercial from the '80s where the older brother shakes down the little brother for his allowance money so he can go get high.

And then there's stuff like the following story, which is just too creative, unusual, outside-the-box (and sad) for classification.

According to a story from the Associated Press, the Chelan County Sheriff's office told the Wenatchee World that an unidentified person broke into the Cashmere Museum Friday night, tearing through fence and kicking in the door of a pioneer village exhibit.

What were they after, you ask? Beaver pelts? Historical objects? Coonskin caps? Turn-of-the-century saddle soap?

None of the above. This yet-to-be-identified crook was after the drugs ... specifically, a bottle of morphine tablets from World War I that were on display at a period doctor's office that is part of the museum's pioneer village. An old glass case where the pills were displayed was destroyed during the break in.

According to reports, Cashmere Museum Manager Frey Harvey estimates repairs to the exhibit will cost about $3,000. Harvey also notes this isn't the first time the museum has been violated in such a manner, as the Buckhorn Saloon, originally built in 1866 on Badger Mountain and part of the Cashmere Museum's Pioneer Village, has been broken into a number of times.

Sadly for the buzz-desperate crook, officials from the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center tell the AP the pills are almost certainly too old to have any drug effect and that whoever heisted them isn't likely to get high.

Bummer, dude.

However, the question of more concern to those of us at the Weekly Volcano Crime Desk is simple: What was a bottle of World War I era morphine doing as part of a pioneer village display?

Perhaps a trip to Cashmere is in order. - Sleepy Steve, Morphine Related Crime Correspondent