Some years back when 4 stroke outboards were becoming more popular I installed one on my work skiff and was telling my buddy how efficient they were and how much money I saved on gas, He goes and buys one.
Every evening for about a week I go down to the boats and fill his tank up with gas, He goes on and on about how good the motor is on gas and he hasnt had to refill the tank yet.

Then, I started going down and started taking gas OUT of the tank, all of a sudden the motor is no good, the gas use is terrible and hes about ready to go to the dealer and pitch a fit.

Now everyone, including his wife is in on the gag, we are trying our best not to laugh and keep egging him on about his lousy motor, finally, at a get together bbq, I tell him in front of everyone what was gong on before he goes and murders the dealer...He just stood there staring at us with his mouth open, and finally started to laugh, but it was touch and go for a moment, lol

My buddy Heimo Korth and his wife Edna are friends of ours and we are always pranking each other. After he had a book written about His and Edna’s lifestyle came out my Son and I had a couple hats made that said “I know Heimo”. We wore them to the Alaska Trapper’s Association when he attended one meeting and auctioned them off for a donation to a ballot measure we were fighting. He was pretty embarrassed. He traps north of me and catches several arctic fox every year. He flew to town and unbeknownst to me a buddy of mine and Heimo drove sixty miles north of town to my trapline and snowmachined to the very end of my line and placed one of his arctic fox in a marten pole right before a big snow storm. A couple of days later I pull up to the set and it looks like a snowshoe hare is hanging from my pole covered with a fresh mantle of snow. I thought “ what the heck?”. And discovered it was an arctic fox. As there’s no arctic fox here I was suspicious but there was no tracks and there was a slight indentation on the paw right where the jaws came together. I kept quiet about it and a fur dealer spilled the beans to me a while later. The pranks still continue.

This was my Provost Marshal during the last third of my last tour . Look closely at the picture on her wall. Our SEA’s face on Burt Reynolds’ body . No idea how long that hung there before she finally noticed.

I had a friend whose daughter was turning 8 so I mailed her a 5 pound Ghirardelli chocolate bar for her birthday. His family was from Nevada so I arranged for it to be mailed from Nevada with a fake name and return address. He called all his friends and family, but nobody knew anything about it. The next year the package was mailed from Canada again with fake name and address. Year 3 the package was mailed from Costa Rica. Year 4 I had a professor who was going to Russia and I got him to send a package from there. When my buddy had the return address translated he was blown away that it was mailed from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Unfortunately the cat slipped out of the bag after that, but I had him and his daughter going for years.

Starbits

A friend "Sam" worked on a cattle ranch that used artificial insemination. The semen was shipped in containers filled with liquid
nitrogen. That stuff is minus 321 degrees. They found that it was cheaper to dump the stuff and ship the container back and have it refilled than to ship it back full. He and the ranch manager "Bubba" were playing with it. Filled a coffee can with water and dunked it in the nitrogen. Immediate ice!! Bubba left and Sam put it in the freezer in the barn. The next morning he waited until he saw Bubba heading to the barn and put the can of ice on the work bench. In a little while Bubba found it. "Hey, Sam, this ice is still frozen."
They thought that was pretty unusual. Bubba left and Sam returned the can of ice back to the freezer. Next morning he returned it to the work bench. Bubba shows up and is looking for it. He took a hammer and beat it to small bits. He is going all over this small town telling everybody that if you freeze ice in liquid nitrogen that it will stay frozen for days in a tin barn in 100 degree weather.

Folks are saying, "Uhhuh" and shaking their head. Sam never did let Bubba in on it although a number of merchants in the town were privy to it.

I was running some coon sets along the road. I saw where my buddy had got to a few hot trails before I got there. No big deal right.
So I collected 2 really nice grinners and I figured I'd put them In his 160s. But better then that I put one in going east and the other going west. How many times have any of you caught 2 grinners In the same 160. And one going east and one going west.
Well he took 100s of pictures and told that story at every camp fire and at every convention for several years. Well a prank isn't worth a darn unless you tell It.
So I did he was so upset he didn't talk to me for about a year. LOL

My Mom's 'Hood was having problems with Geese taking over and crapping all over, one April Fools Day I went to her house before dawn and filled her yard with dekes and hid in the bush's till I heard her stirring. I blew on a call and here she comes outside in robe, fuzzy slippers and hair curlers with a piece of bread trying to entice them to eat.

I was scrounging some concrete blocks from a monument company building that was torn down, and found an old gravestone for a 2 yr old kid from the 1920's. I took it home and kept it till our Oct Annual Drunken Squirrel Hunt, when I took it directly to my buddy's property and laid it face down in the woods. I waited a full year till the next huint to tell him I found it in his woods and asked did he know anything about it. He had me show him where it was and I found out the NEXT year he had spent countless hours on the phone calling around to people with that same name, trying to find out about it.

When I was and undergrad in college, I was in the cafeteria eating dinner with a bunch of friends, when my friend Larry came over and set a piece of cheesecake on the table. Larry said it was the last piece and told us not to eat his cheesecake. He then went over to get a drink.

I quickly grabbed the cheesecake, cut the top off with a knife, hollowed out the center, took the lids off of two salt shakers, filled the cake full of salt, put the top on and smoothed the sides, so you could not tell it had been tampered with.

Larry came back, thanked us for not eating his cheesecake and took a large bite of mostly salt. He started making horrible faces and then swallowed it down and took another bite. I yelled "Larry don't eat it". I then asked why he was still eating it and he told me "I did not want to give you the satisfaction."

Keith

Fire station used to be prank central until we all became kinder and gentler. Was a guy that ran the honor store had a cabinet he kept supplies in. Put his own lock on it and was only one had a key keep out us riff-raff. So one day a mouse finds it's way into the cabinet makes it self know the way mice do and guy goes kinda crazy about killing it. Gets him self a snap trap and sets it. Next day he sure enough has his one little mouse end of problem. Resets the trap just in case there maybe another. Well little did he know that the cabinet was easily opened by just pulling the hing pins. The Assistant chief on my shift was one of the greatest prankers around and knew this. So when the great trapping exploits were told how the one mouse was no match for our trapper. He dug that mouse out of the trash and it was game on. A day later our trapper finds another little mouse, dang there were more. Then it turns into a mouse every day things are getting bad. Now he is catching mice of all sizes and colors decides place has to be infested..Then comes the double two mice in his one lone trap. Guy is just about beside him self telling everyone place is over run. Just about to call pest control when he finds a muskrat in his one little trap. That is when he knew he was had..

Mac

I used to have a good time teasing my friends about being poor shots when we were out geese hunting. They didn’t know that I dumped the buckshot out of their shells when they were sleeping.

Muskrat is quiet today......must be at work on his next prank

Back in my teenage years, every once in awhile - my buddies and I would set up a delayed firecracker under a sidewalk bench in downtown. we would light a cigarette, take a few drags, then tear off the filter, stick the fuse of the firecracker in the unlit end of the smoke, then set this configuration underneath a bench and then stroll along our way and be clear of the crime scene when it went off.

i put one of the big snap firecrackers that you throw at the ground and they explode under the toilet seat at work. I had this guy patterned to be the first one to use it everyday. Didn't take long for the shot behind the steel door to go off. He came peeling out of there, right to my office down the hall. He thought it was funny after he calmed down, but said it didn't feel good next to bare skin.

Sometimes a prank gathers a life of its own. This one did.

I taught high school biology for 31 years, which gave me lots of time for mischief. Was sitting in front of the computer one day, might've been study hall, lunch, whatever, had time on my hands. So I'm looking through pictures of critters and come across this one.



Hmmmmm . . . oh yea. Most schools have an email system within the school district, where staff members can communicate within the system. So I plucked this picture off the 'net and sent it to select high school compadres, explaining that I had some trail cams located iin and around Devil's Lake State Park and one of them captured this scene. And yes, it was this very picture.

I figured the prank would stay within the building, but nope. It spread like wildfire. I thought most folks would recognize it wasn't a white-tailed deer, and therefore, was a prank. But apparently others were caught up in the spirit of the moment and away it went.

Then the emails came my way, wondering exactly where my trail cam was set up. Emails became phone calls, from other hunters, concerned parents, DNR, law enforcement, etc. Apparently there was a certain game warden that bought into it and he spread it out there that indeed, Sauk County has a mountain lion with photographic proof. By the time his counterparts pointed out the hind end of that deer to him, multiple times, he was plenty cranky. Even called me up at home and commenced to chewing me out for doing such an evil deed. Which of course made it all the better.

The worst case was a friend of mine who apparently took to carrying a copy of this picture in his pocket, and would show it to friends of his insisting that indeed, we do have mountain lions in the area. Well, I just happened to visit the establishment he was working in one day and upon seeing me, ran up to me with this picture and was sharing how we've got mountain lions in Devil's Lake State park. Initially I laughed it off but the more I laughed the angrier he got. Finally I told him the truth, pointed out the identity of the deer species, and explained it was just a prank. He hasn't spoken to me since. Sheesh!

Anyway, good pranks are good for the soul. But occasionally they do gain legs.

I've got time for another one.

My teaching schedule included one section, most years two sections, of a class that was entitled Wildlife Ecology and Management. Fairly broad enough I could insert just about anything into the curriculum and it would fall under this umbrella. This was a first semester course only, open to juniors and seniors. Had a three-week fish unit in there where we used fyke nets, seines and fishing tackle to sample fish in the Baraboo River that ran within a couple hundred yards of the building. Deer management unit, and also a three-week trapping unit which commenced with the school bus dropping off the 40-some students at a private marsh and I followed with the truck and boat hooked up, and canoe. Each kid got a #110 and a #1 stoploss and we set up the marsh for one day, harvested 'rats the next, skinned 'em and put 'em up in class. Couple pics from that class years ago now.





Well, to kick off the wildlife management units, I would always invite the local game warden in for a period to share his/her stories about the life of a warden. Since the Dells had a huge turnover of wardens, I had access to new wardens every several years. Which set the table for a prank.

This was also about the time that 'coon were worth good money and a couple of my former students and friends would accompany me on midnight 'coon hunts with the old Johnny Stewart cassette came caller. Well, one day this idea popped into my head and away it went.

Got a blank cassette tape, fast forwarded it about 20 minutes, then recorded Dennis Kirk's Coon Puppies onto it. So I've got a cassette with 20 minutes of blank space, followed by 'coon puppies screeching away, right?

The morning of the visit by the warden I would set things up in the classroom prior to students arriving. The box would be set up by my desk up front, and I would run the speaker wires around to the outside wall, under the windows, and the speaker was placed into a cardboard box along that wall. Also in that box was a large, tanned raccoon pelt.

The students were always in on it. Too much could go wrong with this one and besides, the kids always got a big bang out of it.

So this Wildlife class was usually a third or fourth period, and I'd have to go fetch the warden from the office between classes. So as the Wildlife students were filing in, I pushed PLAY on the cassette deck/box and headed for the office. By the time I got back with the warden, the students were seated, had enough time to wipe the smirks of their faces, I would take roll, introduce the warden, then go sit in the back of the room to listen to the warden talk.

Well, you can imagine what happened when this 'coon screeching suddenly erupted during his talk from this cardboard box alongside the classroom's window wall. The kids had instructions to act surprised and scared, and a few would jump up and away from the box.

I would immediately stand up and shout something like "Oh no, I forgot about that raccoon in that box last night." Then I'd make a beeline for the box. The warden would always head over there too,, but always, always stayed behind me.

So I'd carefully open the top of this box, carefully insert my hand inside, then grab that 'coon pelt, scream about getting bit, stand straight up with it attached to my neck. Yeehah!

Everyone of those wardens were backpeddling as fast as they could go, over desks, between desks, headed for the door. I would turn and then face the warden, pull this thing off my neck, and start petting it. Said something like "Oh look, it's going to sleep."

Was always a good ice breaker. The kids liked it, and some of the wardens enjoyed the prank. Some didn't. Oh well, you can't please all the people all the time.

Occasionally I bump into one of these fellas over the years, and yes, most of 'em bring it up and we share a few laughs about what happened back when. There's one, however, that's still rather cranky about the whole thing.