Demand for fancy cocktail ice spurs Chilean man to steal five tonnes’ worth—from a glacier

Seizing on a new and unique way to sucker people into paying exorbitant prices for water-based products, a man in Chile chipped five tonnes of ice from a glacier in Patagonia, which he allegedly planned to sell as “designer ice cubes.” The Guardian reports that cops busted the man as he was driving a refrigerated truck with about $6,200 worth of illicit ice that would have wound up in fancy cocktails in Santiago, Chile. The ice, by the way, was taken from Jorge Montt, which ranks among the world’s most rapidly shrinking glaciers—it’s retreating at a rate of half a mile per year, according to the Guardian. In addition to making us not want to live on this planet anymore, this story leaves many lingering questions. Is glacier theft the next big bartending trend? What other landmarks might we desecrate in the name of a perfectly chilled old-fashioned? Could the Leafs raise some extra cash by selling cubes of centre ice? Read the entire story [The Guardian] »

(Images: cocktail, thebittenword.com; glacier, Luis Argerich)