Sometimes lawn gnomes roam. So do lawn frogs, bears, sailors, penguins and turtles, but they don’t roam alone. 

There’s been a rash of lawn ornament thefts in Warwick as of late, but the Warwick Police Department has recovered a trove of them, which they hope to reunite with their owners. 

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the department shared three photos of an assortment of several dozen lawn ornaments that had been recovered and are now in their possession.

According to Deputy Chief Michael Babula, over several days police received calls from residents reporting they found ornaments on their lawn that they hadn’t placed there.

“It sounds like a kids’ prank,” Babula said.

Police asked affected parties to stop by the detective division at their headquarters between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. to see if they recognized any of the ornaments.

There was no lack of respondents, with as many as three parties waiting to talk to detectives at a time yesterday morning. Their stories had a similar ring.

Don and Lisa Izzo of Stillwater Drive have been placing ornaments in their yard for years for children’s enjoyment, and now have more than 75 of them on display. On Wednesday, after seeing the Facebook post, Don went to the police station hoping to recover some of his ornaments after witnessing a strange incident.

“The other night I was in my home, and a car pulls up with no lights on,” said Izzo, who was hesitant to speak with the Beacon as suspects are still at large. “Now, my next door neighbor had recently passed away, and his wife went into a retirement home. So the house had been dark and I thought someone might be breaking into that house.” 

The occupants eventually exited the vehicle, went to the corner of Izzo’s property line, and while one stayed behind; another ran along their shrub line separating the residences into the back yard.

“I yelled at them to get out and they ran to the car and took off,” said Izzo. “Later on I went outside, and was like, ‘Hey wait a minute, there’s stuff missing.’ I was thinking that they were going to rob the other house and I was the one getting robbed.”

Izzo met with a detective who took him into a storage locker in the headquarters’ evidence yard. After about 10 minutes, Izzo and the detective each exited carrying about a half-dozen ornaments and placed them in the trunk of his car.

“We’ve never had, in all that time over 15 years, anything missing,” said Izzo, who believes he’s recovered about half of the missing idols. “This is just some of them. They didn’t take all of them, I think these are the ones they didn’t want and the rest they kept.”

Izzo’s returned items included a frog in a bikini, a bear, a raccoon, and the ever popular bent over lady with bloomers.

“I can understand if this was a joke, but all of these here and a bunch more taken, that’s just something else,” said Izzo.

Police did not disclose where the ornaments were found.

Karen Wilmes of Greenwood offered another story. She and her daughters Allison and Holly brought a frog to the police station. The frog is similar in size to one they had on their lawn, but not theirs.

Karen said she initially thought someone painted the family friend and then realized it was a different frog. After seeing the Facebook post, she brought it down to the station. She reported one missing ornament from the collection – a dog – and was hopeful it was among the ornaments turned over to police.

James Borden, a resident of Highland Beach was likewise hopeful. He reported losing a rather large mushroom that required two people to carry as disappearing from his property four or five years ago.

The mushroom was a wedding gift in 1987 and Borden was anxious to get it back.

Anyone with information about the stolen lawn ornaments is asked to call the Warwick Police at 468-4200.

With reports by John Howell