Swiss sacrificial snowman stolen!

Radical militants have kidnapped a snowman who was to be burned to death during the Spring Festival in Zurich.
The snowman, an effigy of the evil god of winter known as Böögg, was to be sacrificed on April 24 at dawn. The ancient pagan ceremony is one of the most important Swiss rituals. A tower of wood is built up to 40 feet high, and Böögg is fastened to the top.
Everyone cheers as the evil monster is killed with fire, allowing spring to finally reach the Swiss after another long cold winter.
"The bogey man, stuffed with wadding and fireworks, is carried into Zurich's Bellevue Square to be burned precisely as church bells toll 6 a.m. in a ceremony culminating with the explosion of his head," the AP reported.
SwissInfo described the militants as an "extremist group calling itself 1. Mai Strasse Frei," or "Taking back the streets on May Day."
"In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the thieves smashed a window of the garage where it was stored, leaving a chocolate Easter bunny and a hammer and sickle emblem in its place," SwissInfo reported.
A message sent to Swiss newspapers said the cotton snowman, who stands about eight feet tall, was fed up with "putting its head on the line for capitalists."
Heinz Wahrenberger, who has been making the Böögg effigies every spring for 41 years, says it's the first time the snowman has been stolen during his long tenure as the Böögg maker.
Leftist students attempted to steal Böögg in the 1980s, but right-wing police squads managed to break up the plot and prevent the theft.
And nearly a century ago, an underground gang of communists convinced a youngster to light Böögg's funeral pyre before the ritual was supposed to begin.
The Swiss take the death of Böögg very seriously, keeping track of exactly how long it takes him to burn and how quickly his head explodes.
Local witches use this information to compute how quickly summer will arrive and how much rain will fall during the season.
Luckily for Zurich, a spare Böögg will be ready for his execution on April 24.
And the people behind the spring festival -- a secretive cabal of medieval guilds that have controlled Zurich for a thousand years -- say they'll press charges against the militant thieves.
The radical group isn't against Böögg or his ceremonial death. They're against the guilds and the masked rich people who parade around during the spring festival.
"The group described the festival as an 'open-air masked ball for the bigwigs' and said the power-wielding guilds stemming from medieval times belonged in the dustbin of history and not on the streets," AP reported.
Europeans worship hundreds of nature gods such as Böögg, and many of the giant pagan deities are ceremonially consumed by flames.
Even gods who aren't supposed to be burned to death are often set ablaze by pranksters or militants.