I suppose it could be called the Great Lawn Mower Caper.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking around and checking prices on different lawn mowers. In a casual conversation with a nearby neighbor, I happened to mention the need for a lawn mower as it was more than high time for our yard to be mowed.

The neighbor graciously suggested we could borrow his and he would even run it by so we could get started getting the job done.

He brought the mower by late one afternoon last week after I had gotten off from work. I immediately started cutting the grass that day before it eventually overtook us. The grass was real high in some places, especially around the shed in back of the house.

I finished up mowing what grass and weeds I had missed the previous day. I must say it looked like a different place.

The neighbor from whom I borrowed the mower said it was a contraption that had been repaired. Whatever the case, it still did the job and we were glad he allowed us to use it. He suggested we just store the mower in the carport or in back of the house. I figured either place would be more than safe enough since it couldn’t be seen from the road.

From doing the daily police reports, I am well aware of certain crimes that occur in the city, including theft. I don’t believe anyone can be too careful when it comes to properly storing their equipment guarding against theft.

Four days later, I came home for lunch on Tuesday. The first thing I noticed pulling into the carport was no mower.

A sick feeling immediately overtook me. How do you explain to someone that their lawn mower they had just allowed you to borrow had been stolen so quickly?

Before I put in the dreaded call to the police department to report the theft, I walked over to three other neighbors’ homes to ask if they had seen anything suspicious earlier that day. None said they had seen anything at all. I then called my benefactor, anticipating some really bad news all the while.

“Please tell me you came by and picked up the lawn mower today,” I immediately blurted out. He said he had, but didn’t have an opportunity to leave a note informing us he had retrieved it in order to get some more work done on the mower. It felt like a ton of bricks had just fallen off my shoulders. He said he would return it after the repair work was completed.

The case of the Great Lawn Mower Caper had been solved almost as fast as the detectives solve their cases in the “48 Hours” television series. It didn’t have all the drama as the television series, but I can do without all that.

Randy Hammons is a Daily News staff writer. He can be contacted by calling the office at 985-732-2565 or by email at randy.hammons@thebogalusadailynews.com.