City engineers in Brattleboro, Vermont spent eleven years replacing the same manhole cover on Elm Street. Every spring, it vanished. They welded it. Bolted it. Installed cameras that somehow always fogged over in March. In 2023, a plumbing contractor recognized the distinctive hexagonal casting pattern on the stone oven at Sal's Brick House Pizzeria, three blocks away.
Salvatore Muñoz had been borrowing the city's cast-iron covers because they distributed heat perfectly. He'd return each one in November, slightly warped, and take a fresh replacement come spring. The city fined him $1,200. He paid it in pizza - 400 pies delivered to the public works department over six months. They accepted.