Hide yo' kids, hide yo' gnomes.

Something weird has been happening around the normally sleepy town of Boulder, Colorado.

People are waking up to find certain things … missing.

Garden gnomes, to be exact.

Just last week, Boulder resident David Smith woke up to find that his beloved garden gnome, Mr. Gnome, had been abducted during the night. Abducted, we tell you!

In its place was a sinister email sent to David's inbox telling him that his gnome had been given "freedom" by a group calling itself the Gnome Liberation Front. Also included in the email was an unsettling piece of poetry sent by the gnome nappers:

You see me here
But go out fast

For I am gone
Free at last!

Many a snow storm endured
But not a thought you gave

While guarding your yard
Like a Roman Slave

These days are done
For a slave no more

My freedom granted
Go to the yard I am no more!

Along with the eerie poem, the gnome terrorists sent David a hostage photo of the gnome, renamed "Elvis," enjoying life in a new gnome community far, far away.

"I am so much happier now that I am no longer in your miserable garden," wrote the bandit on behalf of David's gnome so David would feel the searing pain of a missing gnome as deeply as possible.

David said that prior to his abduction, Elvis previously known as Mr. Gnome, had lived about 10 feet from the road on his property in the Rose Hill neighborhood, where he's lived for 20 years.

"It's kind of red and orange, your typical tacky looking kind of gnome," he said. "It was out in our front yard under our very large pine tree next to some bushes." Well, David, it's that attitude that explains why Mr. Gnome probably went willing with his captors.

Two other gnomes of a "similar vintage" were not  taken from David's yard, perhaps left intentionally by the abductors to create an atmosphere of anxiety and mutinous mistrust among the remaining gnomes that could later be manipulated for purposes of revolt.

David's harrowing story is one of many, and he's not the only victim of gnome absconding out there. In fact, there's an entire large-scale underground guerilla network of gnome thieves operating under the control of the all-powerful Gnome Liberation Front. Their website, FreeTheGnomes.com, accepts donations and stands in opposition of "oppressive gardening."

"Thousands of gnomes are enslaved in gardens across America," says the site.

There are even online submission forms for people to report "gnome captors," kind of like urban vigilante/ community watch systems to fight garden gnome theft; you know, the real kind of evil.

The garden gnome liberation movement is so widespread and pervasive that it even has its own Wikipedia page, which, for those of you who don't know, are extraordinarily difficult to get. On it, it describes how garden gnomes have become the target of a wide array of pranks, collectively known as "gnoming." It seems Boulder is just another casualty in this disturbing trend.

It also regales visitors with a tale about how, in 2008, a 53-year-old French man was arrested on suspicion of stealing as many as 170 garden gnomes. This is just proof of the extraordinary mind control capabilities the Gnome Liberation Front possesses.

These are dangerous times we live in, dear friends. So tonight, before you lay your weary head to sleep, remember to hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives, hide yo' gnomes.

If you need help remembering that, just mentally change the appropriate words from what they actually are to "gnomes" in the following song:

As for the gnome captors, we just have one thing to say to you.

You don't have to come and confess
We're lookin for you
We gon find you we gon find you
So you can run and tell that,
Run and tell that
Run and tell that, homeboy
Home, home, homeboy.