When a Southern California homeowner first noticed small lawn statues being dropped off on her front yard, she brushed it off as a harmless prank.
But then more began cropping up over several weeks - dozens of them - and the statues had been placed facing her front door "as if they were plotting against us," Robyn Yearout said.
Since the end of July, ceramic gnomes, lions, bunnies and other decorative lawn statues have dotted the front yard of her Victorville home. Of the 54 statues – some of them broken and chipped – Yearout says only two belong to her.
"We walked out in the morning and we had a group of them looking at us when we came out the door.
"I have three kids so I assumed that instead of being TP'd (toilet-papered) I got yard-creatured," she said with a laugh.
But her children had no idea who had left the statues there.
"Some of them are creepy though. Their faces are all broken, like, ugh," said Yearout's son, Nolan.
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Things got even creepier when another batch of about 20 suddenly showed up a few days later.
"They were in the tree. They were everywhere," Yearout said.
On Monday morning, it happened a third time. Yearout figured the statues had probably been stolen from other yards.
"There's a good section of them that look like they came from the same home, because someone has taken the time to paint them all similar," she said.
Yearout contacted the sheriff's department and put pictures of the statues on Facebook, hoping to reunite them with their owners. She's also hoping whoever is stealing them and putting them in her yard will stop.
"I feel bad because I know these things aren't cheap," she said.
