Someone stole my kids pumpkins again!

I've had pumpkins stolen too; it's so annoying and you really have to wonder what kind of person steals pumpkins from someone's home?   I've started taking all my pumpkins in on Halloween night because I've never had any survive when left out that night.   I wonder if the same people who steal lawn signs also steal pumpkins?  It's the same sign of disrespect.   I'm sorry to hear it's started all ready.

Man, that totally sucks! Sorry someone is such an asshole.

Stolen yard signs, stolen gear from Sacred Heart and now stolen pumpkins?!!  What the heck is Duluth coming to?

Perhaps I should point out that people have been stealing yard signs, gear and pumpkins in Duluth and every other city for as long as there have been yard signs, gear and pumpkins.
Gear is stolen by reprehensible thieves and the victims have my sympathy.
Yard signs and pumpkins are stolen by teenagers who are wandering around and see an opportunity to smash a pumpkin or collect yard signs for a prank. It's a completely mindless act committed by normal kids who will grow out of it. The victims lose a cheap item that was meant to be a very temporary part of their lives to begin with.

Awesome, Paul!

I have an idea...since they're about the same color, you could paint Vote No on your pumpkins and see what happens then.

"In an unfortunate turn of events a local man had his house burned to the ground by a homemade defense drone he had patroling his yard to ward off pumpkin thieves. Now back to cute puppies."

Just the sound of "homemade defense drone" gets me all fuzzy inside.

I would take this opportunity to spend hundreds of dollars on security equipment.

@Paul, I'd categorize this under the "creating memories" kind of stuff families do. It's not about expecting to keep the pumpkins forever. It's about instead of having the memory of carving this awesome pumpkins, now they have the memory of someone stealing their pumpkins. It's terrible!

One year, a deer ate the face off one of our jack-o'-'lanterns, and even though the pumpkin was destroyed, we still remember it as one of the funniest things ever. So, mdv, if you can convince your kids that the thieves were no smarter than a deer, maybe that would ease the insult. But wait, the deer actually ate the pumpkin, so it's still smarter than these thieves. Nevermind.

Paul is probably right - normal mindless juvenile behavior (though the yard signs do seem to be targeted more than usual, and happening more often with the marriage issue).  Still, that doesn't mean I can't bitch when it happens to me.  It's normal mindless juvenile behavior to drive too fast and litter.  A few weeks ago, somebody ZOOMED down our residential street, hit and killed the neighbor's dog, and didn't even slow down.  Since the high school opened in our neighborhood - there is litter all over - broken glass on the lake rocks.  All of this is "normal" but dead dogs, excessive amounts of litter, and even stolen signs and pumpkins aren't ok, even if you do believe kids will be kids.

PS:  I wanted to clarify that I was being silly with my "What the heck is Duluth coming to?" comment.  Silliness is ok even for adults.

I was a dumb kid once, and I haven't wholly forgotten what that was like. That said, grown-ups have to communicate boundaries to wayward youths when they are encountered, and do something about it if problems continue. Case sort of in point: my wife eventually got fed up with the kid down the street zooming around in circles on his new dirtbike (with no plates, at fairly high speeds, including in the alley where various children play) -- she talked to him, with no behavior modification. A call to our local community police officer resulted in a very pleasant discussion of the problem, followed by half the people on the block stopping him to complain about kid-on-dirtbike before he could get away. I don't know what happened next, exactly, but I haven't seen the dirtbike again (and interestingly, our house hasn't been egged yet either).

Some people's kids...
 
Are people so unfamiliar with the antics of pranksters that they feel they need to complain, as if they're the only person in the city that's dealing with this kind of crap?

Meh. If there were pictures involved, an addition to the Upset Duluth post would be in order.

Bummer! For the kids, the jack-o-lanterns are the only non-gaudy Halloween decoration. Every other piece of Halloween decor makes me sick. 

Crappy plastic spiders with all the stupid fake webbing, spooky sound machines ... what a waste. We need more people who will get crabby about Halloween, just like the crabby Christmas crowd. Who's with me? Resist the one dollar candy from soybean oil and emulsifiers and hand out onions!

Kids should still carve jack-o-lanterns though. Then they can learn about Gestalt and good design. 

No fair talking about aesthetics.  Yeah - Gestalt (which I needed to google) sounds good, but it's a bit off topic.  Yeah, crappy plastic decorations are a shame, but you can never judge a person on such a superficial level.  Lots of wonderful, smart people consume plastic crap.  Enlightenment is elusive, and I doubt that anyone who spends time posting on this blog has reached such a state.  Still, I agree that pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns are cool.

On Saturday, three teenage boys walked up into our yard and started picking apples off our tree. It is a pitifully small, new tree that this year produced its very first crop - maybe ten apples. Honeycrisp apples. I've been waiting all summer to eat them. I went outside and suggested that maybe the boys could leave the apples, please. They set them down and shuffled off to find something else to chuck at cars. I'm still mad.

I blame Jim Carlson.