I've got a (thankfully) funny story about an attempted bike theft.
Firstly, a bit of background info: I live at the end of a couldersack on top of a hill which is pretty quiet. My driveway is about 50m long going down a hill, and separates into a sort of oval maybe 20m in length, about 10m wide on a slight angle. At the top is the shed, below the house. The shed is facing away from the road, so there is no chance you'd see anything in the house or shed from the road.
I had recently been working on a couple of mates bikes, fixing them up and tuning gears, brakes etc. There were about 5 or 6 bikes in the house, and so I put three of them in the shed. They weren't just leaned on the wall or anything, they were put inside the workshop section with a ladder, whippersnipper and other assorted awkward items between them and the door. I'd been testing a couple of things on my own bike, and for some reason ended up borrowing the drive side crank bolt from my mates bike (one of the bikes placed in the shed).
Anyway, late one night (probably 1:30 / 2:00 ish) I was getting ready to go to bed when all of a sudden my next door neighbour and a mate of his bursts (well, maybe not bursts.. walks quickly) into my room. Apparently, he and the other bloke were in the process of leaving his house to go for a drive when they noticed a couple of shady looking fellows exiting my driveway, each wheeling a bike. He knows they're mine, and immediately yells out and gives chase.
Here's the catch: One of the bikes these pieces of filth is trying to steal is the one I'd removed the crank bolt off. So, like anyone who's stealing a bike, he and his mate hop on the bikes and go to pedal off. As you can probably guess, this doesn't end so well for Mr. POF. The crank detaches from the spindle and the whole lot falls to the ground. So he yells out to his mate; "Oi! The pedal broke, run for it!". And so they both run up the street, unfortunately getting away.
The weird part was that when my neighbour returned the bikes, the one that "broke" was still missing the crank. I asked him about it and he said he didn't see it. No problems, it's probably still up in the couldersack. I go up and have a quick look around but didn't find anything. By this time I was pretty tired so I went to sleep, it could wait til the morning.
The next day, my mate comes round and we make a thorough search of the entire road. Still no crank. At this point I figured that they would be thief had somehow taken just the crank. But as I was walking back down the road, I noticed something shiny in one of the bushes on the side of the road. Sure enough, It was the missing crank.
For some reason, the would be thief had grabbed the crank as hell fell off the bike, run off with it and then 20m up the road decided he didn't really want it anymore and threw it away.
When I think about it, even though it ended up being pretty funny, if my neighbour hadn't been there at the right time those pieces of scum would probably have gotten away with both bikes. Needless to say the bikes are all stored inside the house now.
. We can't all be perfect (except me of course...) 
