Believe it or not, but in Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) there's actually an organization active by the (translated) name of Garden Gnome Liberation Front. What they do is steal garden gnomes from people's lawns and then put them somewhere in the forest.
They tend to make the news a lot in the summer months when real news is slow (not because they're not serious things happening in those months, it's just that noone wants to hear bad news when they're on holiday).