Someone pulled off an awesome prank this week in Springfield, Oregon — 75 lawn gnomes were stolen and then “meticulously placed” around an unlucky Thurston resident’s front lawn. It was one of the lead stories on KVAL last night and made the front page of the Register-Guard today.
Even crazier, the Springfield Police Department is keeping all these gnomes in their office. “We need to get them out of here, Springfield Capt. Richarard Harrison said. “Every time I leave my office they’re sitting in my chair, working on my computer. I can’t seem to get rid of the darn things.” From the R-G article.
The SPD has posted photos of the gnomes on its Web site and is having an open house on Tuesday for people to identify and recover lost gnomes. In the meantime, Springfield Tweakers will be running wild while Johnny Law has his hands full.
Normally I wouldn’t cover this stuff, but I haven’t heard much from Thurston resident, Karl the Mule lately (busy with something, I guess) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
Just wait until the Gnome Liberation Front gets involved! Then we’ll all be knee deep in it! The Gnome Liberation Front was a huge prank in Europe in 1997-99 or somewhere around there. The radio station I worked for overseas at that time got hold of the story and we began to run weekly Gnome Liberation Front updates to the delight of our audience. Perhaps this is a fiendish plot by the GLF to liberate all lawn Gnomes in the U.S.!
Underpants gnomes of the world, unite!
I, myself, was raised by garden gnomes. My second cousin is one of the kidnapped gnomes and my entire family is anxiously waiting for his release. I hope they are all able to return home unharmed.
This is hilarious. I love garden gnomes, but never thought about stealing 75 of them….that’s quite the effort. With these kinds of pranks we can rest assured that garden gnomes will continue to be part of pop-culutre for a long time.
Actually, here’s a fun article on garden gnomes and how they’ve gotten into pop-culture.
http://www.gnomefrenzy.com/history-of-garden-gnomes.html