No one knows who's the culprit behind the disappearance of a five-foot plastic statue of Simon the Chipmunk. But the Rockland, Massachusetts family who owns it is glad that the Alvin And The Chipmunks star is back home.
Even if his glasses are missing.
Rockland police are probing the theft.
"Whoever took him beat him up pretty good," said Irene Kelleher, the other of the 70-pound statue. Tossed in a snowbank, Simon was also scuffed up and missing his tail, she added.
Simon did a vanishing act for 24 hours. He was stolen from the Kellehers' backyard at about dusk Monday.
The following morning, a 25-year-old woman who lives about two miles away spotted the smartest of the Chipmunks on a neighbor's front lawn. Taking Simon out of the snow, she left him to warm up in her living room.
"I was on my way to work about 6:30 (a.m.)," said the woman, who declined to give her name. "I pulled out of my driveway and there he was in the snowbank in my neighbor's yard."
She added: "My fiance likes Simon and The Chipmunks. He wanted to collect all three of them."
The woman learned about the chipmunk-napping indirectly from The Patriot Ledger, a daily paper in Quincy, Massachusetts. Posted on the paper's online site, the story was copied by somebody on Facebook.
The woman who rescued Simon phoned the Kellehers, who count five-year-old Charlie Marie and her two-year-old sister Cailey among their members.
According to her mother, Charlie Marie loves everything about Alvin and The Chipmunks, having seen the movie a dozen times. The youngster also goes to sleep with a handful of chipmunk stuffed animals each night.
"My oldest sat on the kitchen counter, looking out the window with her mouth open and said, 'Someone took Simon,'" Irene Kelleher recounted.
The woman who rescued Simon returned him off to their home Tuesday night. "They were very excited," Kelleher said of her daughters, who jumped and hugged the giant statue.
Simon came from a relative of the Kelleher family who works at a movie theater and has given them movie displays.
The Kellehers have several other statues in their backyard, including a 10-foot Kung Fu Panda and a seven-foot armored knight in armor. To prevent further thefts, The Patriot Ledger isn't giving the family's address.
Charlie Marie Kelleher and kid sister Cailey with a five-foot graven image of Simon the Chipmunk.
