In the past five years, crimes of theft and larceny are down in the United States. This is remarkable in light of the fact that over the same period of time there have been marked increases in both people and stuff. Consequently, it is even more alarming that rickshaw theft in the United States is up 243%. Staggering? Yes. Unavoidable? No.
It seems that our previous plan of instituting neighborhood watch programs isn’t working out well. At first I chalked this up to a lack of neighborly vigilance. However, it has been pointed out to me that it is very difficult to tell the difference between someone legally pulling their own rickshaw and someone grabbing someone else’s rickshaw and simply running away with it. Fair enough.
We have moved on to try new methods of theft prevention but have had little success. For a brief while we really thought we had something with our version of the Club-the popular antitheft device used on car steering wheels. Unfortunately in the late testing stages we finally remembered that rickshaws have no steering wheel. So much for that approach.
For a brief period of time in the 1980s we simply recommended that people use a bike lock to attach a wheel of their rickshaws to a bike stand or other anchored object. Sadly, in the last ten years the black market for rickshaw parts has become so huge that it is well worth it for your average rickshaw bandit to pull a one-wheeled rickshaw for a few city blocks.
America, our very freedom is being put at stake here. If we, as Americans, don’t have the freedom to climb into a small cart and be pulled around by another human being, well, then we don’t have very much. It is with this in mind that we have developed the trainable rickshaw wolverine. These highly intelligent yet savage animals can be trained to recognize the owner of the rickshaw while brutally attacking any would-be bandits.
From you, the valuable rickshaw-riding public we simply ask that you bear with us during the inevitable maulings and deaths that will accompany the institution of this system as we try to explain the difference between passengers and bandits to the wolverines. We thank you in advance for both your patience and your lack of resistance during the wolverine attacks as that would only set back the training process.