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syz's avatar

I need help from the devious minds of the collective for a prank!

Asked by syz (35938points) August 5th, 2009

My younger sister is very concerned with fitting in and keeping up with the Jone’s. When she bought a house here in town, I had an evil streak one day. I sent her an e-mail entitled “Can you believe how tacky some people can be?” while she was out of town on vacation. The first photo was a close up of truly tacky Easter decorations. The second photo was from further back and showed a familiar looking door with incredibly tacky decorations. The next photo was from far enough away to show that it was her house that I had so atrociously decorated!

Well, she escalated. When I came back from a trip to Alaska at on July 4th at 2am, I found 2000 tiny American flags planted in my yard. It looked like Arlington Cemetery (I’ll post the photo if I can find it).

I needs ideas that don’t permanently affect or damage her house and don’t cost a lot. I’ve considered the local service that will sneak over at night and put up 100 pink flamingos, but that’s a little too obvious. Can you help me?

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46 Answers

poofandmook's avatar

You could prank her like the movie Juno, like the scene where Juno writes in chalk on the sidewalk to check the mailbox and when Bleek opens it, hundreds of boxes of tic tacs come cascading out… maybe not tic tacs, but something similar. Also I’d do it after you know the mail carrier has been there… would be a shame to waste it.

You could get a bunch of little pom-poms from the craft store, or ping-pong balls… the ping-pong balls could be especially fun because theyr’e so bouncy. Also you could write something on each ping-pong ball.. mwahahaha I need to find someone to prank now.

Fly's avatar

You could always go old-school and teepee her house with toilet paper and silly string. ;)

PerryDolia's avatar

How about erecting one of those inflatable, life sized Santa and sleigh things on her lawn? since it is still 4 months ‘til Christmas.

Would be perfect if she was gone over a long weekend, so it would stay up for a while.

PerryDolia's avatar

You could use some of that water based chalk stuff that people use to write “Go Eagles” on their car windows (since it washes off easily), and write something you know to be embarrassing to her, like “Happy Birthday Rush Limbaugh” on her garage door.

syz's avatar

I wonder how many ping pong balls it would take to fill up a two car garage?

monsoon's avatar

Aw, I was thinking of the pink flamingos! An old church of mine used to do that to raise money.

It would take some effort, but you could order lawn poster’s for some political affiliation or politician she is against.

PerryDolia's avatar

How about a “For Sale” sign. You know a Realtor who might loan you one for a few days?

RareDenver's avatar

@PerryDolia if she likes to keep up with the Jones’ wouldn’t a foreclosed sign be better

Fly's avatar

Is she going to be away long anytime soon? Do you have a key to her house?
You could always arrange to have all of the furniture in her house “stolen” and kept in a storage warehouse for a few days…

PerryDolia's avatar

How about “Meth Lab Cleanup Site”......might be a bit extreme.

Combine the For Sale and Foreclosure sign ideas, something like:

For Sale
Motivated
Foreclosure
$Price

Then put a $Price that is 50% of the apprx market value.

cak's avatar

I have flocked a yard (lots of pink flamingos) before. I have put a really tacky display in a yard before, involving said flamingos and tacky tourist stuff- making it look “summery.”

I would go with cheap (think crappy pottery store) garden gnomes. Place them in her lawn and along her front porch. See if there is a tacky sign paying homage to the gnomes, as well. If you really look for good gnomes, there is one that is mooning people. by good, I mean tacky!

cyn's avatar

what about tic-tacs in her car?

cyn's avatar

Set her whole house with mouse traps!

gailcalled's avatar

You can make stupid-looking pigs out of empty clorox bottles. Paint them pink, glue on felt or paper ears, paint on nostrils and use pipe cleaners for curly tail. I have seen dozens of them on a lawn. It was visually very funny, but will take time and effort on your part.

torch81's avatar

This is best done on a day that it is raining, or there is something that would make the victim not want to stay outside for long:

Get your hands on a couple hundred of those plastic red cups that are so common at college parties. Then take them and spread them across every place that she could walk inside the house. As you set them up, fill them with water. It will not take you too long to set up, but it will take her a lot longer to clean up because she’ll have to find someplace to put all that water.

Bonus points for doing it before she has some company coming over.

PerryDolia's avatar

How about a sign on the lawn that reads:

A Proud Volunteer for
AIDS Vaccine Testing

andrew's avatar

Ok, it depends on how you want to do stuff.

One thing you can do: if you have a shop vac, go and fill up the cannister with the refuse from 3-hole punches (the little chads). You can then blow them out from the shop vac where they’ll become statically charged and cling to everything in a room. Note: you can adapt the end of your shop vac with a piece of paper to do this under locked doors.

The other option is to string up her trees over multiple weekends with xmas tree lights.
Then, when Christmas gets nearer, you can turn them all on in a Clark Gable-esque rhapsody.

I have others, depending if you have access to her house keys and how far away she lives.

Jeruba's avatar

I once helped the science teacher and his whole class fill the principal’s office from floor to ceiling with balloons. Excellent prank and completely reversible. It did take a lot of puffing, though. Is there an enclosed entry way, a small enclosed porch, or maybe…the bathroom?

Likeradar's avatar

If you have a key to her house you could turn everything upside down. I did that to a friend in college… pictures, some furniture, glasses in the cabinet, etc. It’s a pain in the ass to fix and there’s some things you don’t notice for a while

Jeruba's avatar

P.S. I did this as a parent of one of the students.

jamielynn2328's avatar

Not to promote theft at all, but one time when I was a teen, we went around the neighborhood and took all the political signs and for sale signs and put them up in our friends yard. His parents were out of town and scheduled to come home that day.

chelseababyy's avatar

Streamers. Confetti. Random clashing signs like “Merry Christmas” “Happy Birthday” and “Congrats, It’s A Boy!”. Christmas Lights, Halloween fake spider webs. Lawn Flamingos and lawn gnomes. Make a never ending scavenger hunt to a small box with a silly note inside, or maybe something that pops out.

augustlan's avatar

Crime scene tape. Around the entire property, and on the front door of course.

jonsblond's avatar

I was going to suggest an old ugly couch on the front porch or patio but @augustlan can’t be beat. GA @augustlan!

augustlan's avatar

<curtsies> Why thank you!

chelseababyy's avatar

@augustlan THAT’S BRILLIANT. Chalk outline on the driveway, whole nine yards.

augustlan's avatar

@chelseababyy Lurve for the chalk outline!

jonsblond's avatar

Such a cheap idea! Don’t forget the ketchup near the chalk outline.

I am so ready to do this to someone. Thanks again @augustlan

chelseababyy's avatar

@augustlan Thanks :].

Oh and you need those numbered things with evidence like in this recreated crime scene here

And if you’re around when she pulls up, you should pull up, get out of the car with sunglasses, a fake CSI jacket and a briefcase.

Jeruba's avatar

Wow, @chelseababyy, you just topped Augie! Magnificent and very wicked.

If somebody ever did this to me, I would fly into a panic, have a heart attack, and probably die. @syz, I surely hope your sister has a strong heart. And you must tell us all about her revenge.

monsoon's avatar

@jamielynn2328, that reminds me of something my brother and his friends used to do at Christmas time as teenagers.

Lawn-ornament scavenger hunt: They had a list of christmas lawn ornaments and how many points they were worth (deer: 10 pts, snowman: 30 pts, baby jesus, 100 pts, etc.), they would take them as they found them, and bring them back in some time period (I assume), and tally up points.

SO immoral, but probably really fun.

christine215's avatar

go with the crime scene tape!

delirium's avatar

Forks. Hundreds of plastic forks stabbed in her lawn.

100 raw fish placed on her lawn.

Go buy a whole thing of that blue chalk line chalk (they sell things to refill the old chalk line with) and dye her driveway, lawn, etc. blue. (It is quite effective. Trust me.)

desiree333's avatar

You should set up an entire living room, and bedroom set made up of the most tacky things from the eighties and nineties in her front yard.

GabrielsLamb's avatar

Put “JESUS SAVES” Signs all over her front hard with a scripture in portions, going up the walkway telling the neighbors that they are all going to hell unless they repent; leading to a HUGE cross, lit up with christmas lights and a HUGE plastic dove at the top.

gailcalled's avatar

I had a friend who saved dozens of gallon-sized clorox bottles. She painted them pink, added felt ears to make bizarre little pigs and festooned them over a neighbor’s yard in the dead of night. Some of them were hanging from trees or sitting on the privet fence, one couple was copulating, one in the vegetable garden with a trowel, one on the porch rocker, etc.

It was so charming that the local newspaper did a spread on it.

christine215's avatar

@delirium , I went to the school that was featured on the MTV show about the forks… we had a long standing senior class prank tradition.

our class used copious amounts of weed killer on the school lawn to burn out the year we graduated.

syz's avatar

Update: I went with the crime scene. I ordered crime scene tape and fake bullet holes from Amazon.com. I taped off the driveway and front stoop, put bullet holes on the garage door and the front door, and chalked a body outline on the driveway (along with some chunky tomato sauce in the grass).

It was effective enough that one of the neighbors called the cops.

lillycoyote's avatar

LOL @syz, thanks for the update. That sounds pretty effective to me!

desiree333's avatar

@GabrielsLamb HAHAHAH such a good idea, all her neighbors will go running.

GabrielsLamb's avatar

@desiree333 That always creeps me out when I see other people doing it as though it’s “Normal” average every day behavior. *Shudders.

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