When gnomes leave home, there’s no knowing where they go It was the stuff of a fine urban legend: a garden gnome gets hoisted from a patch of lawn in Johannesburg (or London or Jeffrey's Bay) and disappears.In one version of the story, the owners get sent ransom notes along with Polaroid snaps of bits of the gnome being cut off and sent in the same envelope until - when the owners have naturally refused to pay up - there is a last photo of the gnome being obliterated by a sledgehammer.story_article_left1In another version, the gnome goes travelling and sends pictures of itself enjoying the world's great sights - the Coliseum, the pyramids, the Grand Canyon, Jamaica - until one morning years later, it appears, much travel-worn, back on its own doorstep.I never knew anyone who "lost'" a garden gnome this way. Then again, I don't know people who have garden gnomes - those who might have certainly not boasted about it.But Bev York of British Columbia, Canada, had one named Leopold who went missing in unexplained circumstances, only to reappear eight months later - but with a whole book of its adventures in tow.According to Mashable, York found Leopold hanging from a plastic bag on her gate one morning, along with the book which showed him having a fine time cruising around North America in a motor home with a couple, their kid and two dogs. No one but Leopold's identity can be verified for certain and he is now back in his garden, perhaps a bit wiser.The prank, says Mashable, was first recorded in 1986 in Australia...