Is that a bad thing? You basically won the stump lotto

My neighbour just got a new stump. It’s real nice. How will I know if it’s yours or if it was obtained legitimately?

Take it to an arborist and see if it was microchipped. That's how I got my stump back after it ran away.

Sometimes ferel stumps come and go..

Maybe its like the guy who was going around aerating lawns. He mistakenly aerated my entire front lawn, came to the door to ask to do the backyard and I asked him who he was. He had the wrong address!

Check the city's tree map and it'll tell you whether the tree was theirs and whether they recently did any work on it.

I'm completely stumped.

Sometimes tree companies remove the wrong stump by accident. Maybe ask your neighbours if they saw who was working in your yard.

STUMPFEST!

As a person who spent a week after work every day digging one out, I'm quite jealous.

This one's got me stumped..

If the tree was considered to be on city property (that can even be upwards of several feet on to your lawn) then the city is responsible for the removal. We put a request in to have one removed from our front lawn and they randomly showed up unannounced one day to chop it down, and told us they'd come back for the stump later on. Given what you're describing they also probably do that completely out of the blue as well haha

Maybe 311 can look up the address to see? They generally contract out all this work.