Ellen Kuryk woke up Wednesday morning to find her wrought iron gate had been nabbed overnight.

“Why would someone want to take a gate?” said Kuryk. “A gate is kind of your privacy, your boundary of your yard, and now we have no boundary.”

Kuryk has lived in her Machray Avenue home for 40 years and was shocked to find not only was her gate missing but so was her neighbours.

“The officer that I spoke to says in his 19 years he has never heard of a gate being stolen!” said Kuryk.

But Const. Eric Hofley said cases of metal theft aren’t that unusual. Scrap metal and copper wiring are frequent targets of thieves.

“For little effort, they can get $5, $10 [or] $15,” said Hofley. “For thieves, it’s all free, and that’s unfortunately for victims, something we don’t often think about. It’s something that’s important to us, but doesn’t have a lot of dollar value.”

Metal and copper wiring can end up at scrap dealers which convert the goods into cash for customers.

“This happens from time to time [but] if it’s something that we don’t feel good about or we think there is a chance that it is stolen, we will either refrain from buying [or call police],” said Adam Chisick, vice president of Urbanmine, a local recycler.

Kuryk has already called a number of scrap metal buyers in the city, asking them to keep an eye out.

“I’ve grown up with this gate, so I just want it back,” she said.

In the meantime, Kuryk and her daughter have put up a small gate made of wood.