Reconnaissance mission

A long time ago, I bought Lance a portable b-ball backboard. It has been laying on the ground for a few years. Some neighbor kids decided that they needed to set it up and use it. That wasn't a big deal, but it would have been nice if they had asked permission first. Then I took it down and layed it in our front yard. One day I realized that the basketball hoop was gone. I wondered who ripped me off but had other things more important to deal with. (I know that is hard to believe. A few years ago things would have been different.) Anyway Lance is here visiting and he said that he thought it was down the street. We went for a walk last night to check it out. That backboard was too shiny to be ours. As we walked home through the neighborhood, we did find our backboard. It was deformed in all the right places. Now what do we do? Do we call the cops or wait until after dark and get it back or find some BIG friends to come help us? First off, we recruited Molly to help us. She can be pretty scary. We thought about using camo face paint but opted out of that. I kinda know the neighbors of the backboard thieves. She just happened to be outside when we walked up there. I asked her if she knew her neighbors. She said yes and told me that they were nice. (I like nice thiefs). She went with us to the neighbors. They said we could take back our backboard. This is the part that I think is funny. They said that they thought it was abandoned. We'll see how long the backboard stays here or if I have neighbors in my yard all the time.