Someone has started strapping soft toys to lampposts. I came across the first one a couple of days ago (see image for 18th Feb) then three more on the way to the pub last night, and then two more today. Why? What’s going on?

Possible explanations:

1. A dark witch or wizard living in the area has decided to put a hex on someone. Unfortunately because of various EU/Health and safety regulations, it is no longer possible to get hold of live animals to sacrifice; pre-packed nuggets, chops, burgers and cutlets, while real flesh, just don’t look right, and so she/he has had to be inventive; at least soft toys look a bit like whole animals.
2. Something similar could apply to a local mafia boss, who, faced with the same regulations and the impossibility of getting hold of substantial equine parts to leave in the bed of rivals, is instead leaving coded messages along the lines of ‘You’ll be the next one to get stuffed. Remember Luca Brazzi…’
3. A couple of robbers have ‘done over’ one of the local toy shops, been startled by the intruder alarm and fled, grabbing the nearest boxes of stock in their escape. These boxes have turned out not to be filled with highly desirable and re-saleable sega-wii-station-play consoles (or whatever they are called) but the aforementioned cuddly animals. In a fit of pique the robbers are now making a ‘statement’ by leaving them around town strapped to lampposts.
4. They aren’t toys at all but cunningly disguised aliens hoping that people will take them home somewhere warm where they will be able to spawn. This strategy clearly hasn’t worked as they are all still there.
5. A local lothario has purchased for each one of his unwitting harem a soft toy as a valentine’s gift. Unbeknownst to him these love-crossed women have recently found out about each other and are hatching a plan, the first part of which is to truss his duplicitous gifts to lampposts. I tremble to think of what might follow.
6. An ogre has moved into the area and is hoping to use the toys as bait to lure children to their doom, a bit like leaving a trail of sweets in the forest. Again, this is proving a failure as a strategy because Brighton, having become gentrified of late, is filled with children who can recognise the difference between acrylic and natural fibres and therefore spurn these cheap goods.
7. Going back to the Aliens theory, it might be that the toys are actually the fruiting bodies of fungus-based life forms from an asteroid that will soon explode filling the streets with mutant spores.

I’m hoping this last theory isn’t true as the idea has scared me a bit just thinking about it.