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SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!
The Song Challenge: Mummy, Where Did The Funny Little Man In The Garden Go?
PARIS -- The dormant Garden Gnome Liberation Front has sprung back to life, stealing about 20 gnomes during a nighttime raid on a Paris exhibition.
"We demand ... that garden gnomes are no longer ridiculed and that they be released into their natural habitat," the Front's Paris wing said in a statement following its weekend strike.
France's first garden gnome exhibition in the exclusive Bagatelle park on the outskirts of the capital opened last month and has been a hit with the public as chic Parisians develop a taste for kitsch culture.
The Garden Gnome Liberation Front vanished from the public eye in 1997 after a northern French court handed its ringleader a suspended prison sentence and fined him for his part in the disappearance of around 150 gnomes.
The only suspected sighting of the organization since then was a mass suicide of gnomes at Briey in eastern France in September 1998, when 11 of them were found dangling by their necks under a bridge.
A letter found nearby said: "When you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."
Now, the sight of 2,000 of the gaudy, colorful creatures dotted around the Bagatelle gardens has clearly proved too big a temptation for the group to avoid.
It warned that it would strike again unless the show was closed and all the gnomes released.
Organizers told the daily Le Parisien that they had no intention of bowing to the Front's demands.
13 Minutes For Bert by MMario
Bert said: "Bloody 'ell. TWO songs within an hour!!!! Of course they're only kept in gardens 'cos they 'aven't got an 'ome to got to."
So, MMario replied:
Oh pity the gnomes
who don't have any home
They stand in the garden all day
Until they have heard
A discouraging word
and then they all just run away!
Groan, Groan, for the Gnomes
The gnomes without any home
If they had a good home
Then they wouldn't roam
And they'd have no excuse for to stray....