It is with a great deal of caffeine-fueled righteous indignation that I bring the plight of the lowly garden gnome to your attention. Every year, thousands of innocent gnomes are hunted down in their natural habitat, the forest, and taken prisoner. They are then sold by the truckload by well known home improvement retailers, which I won't name in this space for fear of lawsuits, but which may as well be called Gnome Depot.

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"Few other groups in this day in age are allowed to suffer such indiginities with society's implicit permission," says one of a growing group of radicals, writing under the gnome de guerre 'Larry.' "When will our people rise up and whack our oppressors on the ankle?" Even worse, gnomes must face this hardship alone. Rarely are gnomes ever placed in gardens in pairs, and they're never, ever allowed female companionship.Indeed, the so-called International Association for the Protection of the Garden Gnome was so horrified that anyone should think of female gnomes that it fined a fellow named Reinhard Griebel $45 for raising the issue in 2002.

"It's tough out here, all by yourself," says one gnome, an aging veteran of the California landscape. His face is lined with cracks and his pointy red hat on his balding head only just covers that worst of hairstyle offenses, the gnomeover. "And what are you going to do if you escape? It's not like you can go find yourself a wife and go gnomesteading." Indeed, the annual round up of male gnomes from the forest has many ecologists wondering how much longer the exploitation can continue before gnomes become extinct in the wild. "We still know very, very little about these people," says Dr. Paul Imer, a member of the Gnome and Garden study group. "We've not even had a chance to study their DNA, you know, their gegnome."