Last week, a swimming pool was stolen from a New Jersey backyard between 1:00 and 5:00 am. The hip-high, 10 ft. diameter inflatable pool held 1,000 gallons of water. The water might have been stolen too because there was not a drop found in or around the yard. Weird!

Thanks to my favorite radio call-in show, I then learned that some other strange things have been reported missing. 

-A recycling bin, with the trash STILL in it:  Yuck!

-A lawn sign proclaiming that the premises were protected by an alarm system.

-Frequently stolen from a farmer's display of the ten commandments along a lot of fencing in downstate IL is the comandment, "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

Always entertaining (to me at least) are the stories of garden gnomes that have gone missing, only to appear in vacation photos sent to the home. Of course, if something that I treasured was stolen, I'm not sure how I would like hoping that photos will arrive and thus indicating that the object will eventually be returned.

I loved this entertaining CNN video last Jan. A baby Jesus was taken from a family's nativity scene. Eight months later, the doll was returned with a book entitled, "The Baby Jesus Chronicles".  In the book were pictures of Baby Jesus having a great time in upstate New York. He was on a merry-go-round horse (stuck between its ears), on a bicycle, in a car seat with seatbelt, in a kitchen making brownies..and so on.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2006/12/20/kidnapped.baby.jesus.returns.wgrz