“We had a tip-off about a hoarder mid-afternoon yesterday,” said David “Punc” Smith. “We immediately invoked our dusk raid protocol, and visited the location at about 7 p.m. local time.”

Smith said the apostrophes were being held captive in dozens of small signs.

“The fellow was obviously a retired grocery store produce manager who’d kept a lot of mementos from his career,” said Smith. “All the signs, and I do mean all of them, had trapped apostrophes in them. He had apples labeled as apple’s and… well let’s just say a man my age should not have to see that sort of thing being done to the word rutabagas.”

Smith said it took the members of his team nearly three hours, working under cover of darkness, to safely extract all the apostrophes.

“It was terrible, probably one of the most intense raids we’ve ever done,” Smith noted. “But I’m pleased to say we successfully rescued all the apostrophes, and they are now being kept at an undisclosed location for treatment.”

As is typical in ALF operations, the team left several pamphlets about correct apostrophe use in the hoarder’s mailbox.