The story began in Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Finistère, France. Dany Lautrou says that her 40 cm tall statue, which she had received as a gift for her 30th birthday in 1995, had disappeared. One month after it went missing, the family received the first letter signed in its handwriting "The Dwarf"."
A gift with sentimental value
A figure Dany Lautrou received for her 30th birthday. The garden gnome wears glasses, smokes a pipe, and holds a book in its hand. It was a gift from her colleagues at the hospital in Morlaix, where she works as a medical secretary.
When the little statue disappeared, Dany immediately thought it was the work of the Front for the Liberation of Garden Gnomes. This mysterious movement involved taking garden gnomes hostage and releasing them into the wild, while regularly letting them know where they were.
Photos of her missing garden gnome posing in every corner of the world
In total, Dany received five letters, each crazier than the last. In them, the author explains that he "could no longer bear being locked up in the garden" and apologizes "for leaving without warning". The letters continue to arrive from a wide variety of places. On one postcard, the little gnome poses at the entrance to a mythical village called Choux Bacquet, which was created by the imagination of the blogger Golem13. Another postcard shows the garden gnome on a beach in Réunion Island, although it was posted from Vannes. The garden gnome sometimes claims to be accompanied by a Colombian woman named Régine, whom he calls the "love of his life". On the back of the postcard, he explains that she is his "new wife", according to Dany.
The Lautrou family has heard nothing more about the statuette. The only clues the former owner has are the places from which the letters were sent. These include Vannes in the department of Morbihan, more than 100 km from Saint-Martin-des-Champs. The Lautrous are undoubtedly hoping that their garden gnome will return home. They are not the first victims of such a prank.
Although the story may sound funny to some, Dany Lautrou is slowly losing patience: "He was with me for almost 27 years and disappeared overnight. The dwarf is truly part of my life and I am very attached to him, especially since he was a gift from two friends, one of whom is no longer alive", she says.