Classic Post: Pranking the Prankster
Originally Published in 2006 – Occurred: Spring 1999
(It’s hard to believe that this was 10 years ago – Goddamn we’re getting old.)
In the city of Adrian, MI, the only nightlife to speak of was an unimpressive nightclub on the outskirts of the city, called the L.A. CAFÉ. The CAFÉ was a hotspot for college kids like us because of their $1.50 pitcher night on Thirsty Thursdays, and the bar’s convenient location, a drunken mile’s walk back to campus after a night of cheap carousing.
After the ritual pre-partying one Thursday evening, my good friends “Barry” and “Juan” headed over to the CAFÉ for their usual festivities. The two of them were roommates, and lived in the last room at the end of the hall in the dorm.
They were also both ex-college football lineman, so it’s a given that they could drink a ton.
My other buddy, ‘MKW’ and I stuck around the dorm to drink there. This was before I had acquired my fake ID, and going to the CAFÉ to not drink didn’t sound like the best use of my evening.
After they left, MKW and I polished off the remainder of the 30 pack we’d opened with Barry and Juan and started on another. At around 11:00 PM, we decided to go for a little stroll around campus.
Located on campus about 60 yards from the dorm is a bell tower. It seemed to serve little purpose, other than to house the resident crows of Lenewee County and possibly to one day serve as a platform for a disgruntled student with a sniper rifle.
Source: sdcounty.ca.gov
As we were walking back toward the dorm past the belltower, we were feeling much better after a breath of fresh air. I noticed a stiff crow lying on the ground. I kicked it at MKW, who squirmed like a little girl. I laughed and we went inside to watch The Simpsons.
A half hour later I was thinking about the dead crow and all the things we could do with it. My best idea was to plant it in the salad bar in the dining hall the following lunch. As I was pondering how to accomplish this without detection, MKW had an idea.
“Let’s put it in Barry’s bed!!” I was amazed at MKW’s drunken ingenuity and the thought of Barry passing out in his bed, only to wake up in the morning, severely hungover and wondering if he’d fucked this poor crow to death. After thinking about it, I decided no matter how good of friends Barry and I were, he’d surely murder our asses if we did that to him. Barry doesn’t like to be the butt of jokes. We needed a slightly less repulsive way to fuck with him. We thought for a little while; the refrigerator and his bar (yes, they had a fucking bar in their dorm room) seemed like pretty good targets, but we ultimately decided we were going to hang the crow from their loft with a makeshift noose.
After The Simpsons were over, MKW and I went to retrieve the dead bird. He was a bitch about it and wouldn’t touch it, so I carried the stiff, cold carcass into the building by it’s feet while wearing a mitten I found in the lobby of the dorm. I hate dead animals.
On our way back to the building, we ran into “Mary”, who was outside smoking a cigarette. I tried to avoid her, but she called me over. I quickly ditched the dead bird in the shrubbery next to the building. She saw me, and presumably saw what I was carrying but didn’t say anything about it. She invited me to smoke with her outside on the porch of the dorm. I declined to smoke, but stood outside with her and MKW went inside.
Mary was a cool chick. She was fun to talk to, decent looking, and easygoing. She was one of those people that pretty much fit into every social circle. It always perplexed me that she never seemed to have a boyfriend. She was one of the very few sorority girls on campus that I didn’t loathe talking to.
Outside of the usual bullshitting, Mary didn’t say hardly anything at all. She just eyeballed me suspiciously while I quietly watched her puff her smoke while trying not to bust out into hysterical laughter. I knew she knew that I was fucked up, and all I could wrap my mind around was how this must have looked to her; It was midnight, MKW and I were strolling in from the belltower acting strangely, me wearing this pink fucking mitten on only one hand (even though it wasn’t cold out), and I knew that I couldn’t say two words without tearfully laughing my ass off for what would appear to the normal, sober person as absolutely no reason at all.
All I could think of to do was to wait her out, then I would grab the carcass quickly, run inside and hang this bird from Barry and Juan’s loft with a bungee cord before they got home.
Much to my chagrin, Mary lit up another cigarette, and again offered me one. It was as if she was fucking with me intentionally. All I wanted was for her to go inside so that I could accomplish what was at the time the most important thing I would ever do in my entire life.
I again declined to smoke. I said goodnight and I walked around the corner, casually grabbing the bird from the bushes as I dashed toward the back side of the building where the rear entrance was.
The trash room was right inside the door. I knew I couldn’t just carry this dead bird through the lobby to our hall, so I stuck the bird in a trash bag and carried it up.
I pounded on MKW’s door. He came out, essentially ready for bed. Apparently MKW’s short attention span had lost interest in fucking with Barry. It was up to me if something cool was to take place.
Much to my dismay, Barry and Juan had locked their door before they left. I now was left with few options. It is getting close to 1:00 AM, the time that people tend to leave the CAFÉ, so I knew I had to act fast.
Leaving the bird in the bag, I tied the top of the bag around the handle of Barry and Juan’s door. On his dry-erase board I wrote:
“I Never Stoned the Crow.”
This is a line from the song ‘Stone the Crow’, by Down. This just happened to be Barry’s favorite song at the time.
Then I waited.
Twenty minutes later I heard them come into the dorms. Since my room was around the corner about 40 feet away, I was able to sneak out and watch their reaction without detection. The anticipation was intense.
Barry was exceptionally intoxicated. Juan was considerably more sober since he was the driver.
Barry was loud and boisterous. There were two types of Drunk Barry: Loud and fun, and loud and mean. I couldn’t determine which Drunk Barry I had on my hands, but I could tell that his level of inebriation had reached the point where he loses all basic motor skills. His estimated clear visibility in this state is about 20 inches. Mistaking his nipples for pepperonis is not an uncommon effect of this condition.
Barry staggered to the door of his room first. He leaned over to try to figure out which key opens the door, apparently oblivious to the trash bag tied loosely to the handle he was trying to unlock. He almost fell over and had to use the wall to hold himself up.
Juan got to the door behind.
“Move, dude. What the hell is that bag on the handle there for?”
Barry stepped aside awkwardly out of Juan’s way and grabbed the trash bag and tugged violently. It fell out of his hand and landed at his feet, contents still concealed.
I giggled quietly from down the hall.
As he curiously fumbled around for the opening to the bag, Juan read out loud, in a curious, slightly confused, monotone voice:
“I never Stoned the Croooooowwww… Hey dude, what’s in the bag?”
Just then Barry reached in and lifted the cold slimy dead bird to the top of the bag.
As soon as he realized what he was holding he dropped the bird and jumped five feet from the bag.
“Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Is that a dead bird???”
By now I couldn’t control my laughter. I saw them look at me from 40 feet away with a look of drunken bewildered horror on their faces while I was doubled over laughing my ass off. I heard MKW in his room cracking up when I noticed that Barry had the bag again, at first swinging it over his head like a lasso, then banging it on every door in the corridor demanding to know who put a dead bird on his handle.
Barry noticed that a couple of freshman kids that lived halfway between them and I had opened their door to investigate the commotion. He wound up the bag like he was twisting a wet towel and flung it down the hall at them like an Olympic Hammer Thrower. They ducked back into their room for cover. Barry then broke into a full sprint and long jumped onto the bag, crushing it’s contents. At this point “Marvin”, my next door neighbor and R.A. for our corridor, came out to see Barry violently stomping on this trash bag in the center of the hall, Juan in front the door to his room hysterically laughing, and me, lying on the floor, curled up in the fetal position right in front of him, half convulsing from the hysteria. To this day I have laughed harder maybe two or three times in my entire life, and I laugh a lot.
“What in the fuck are you guys doing out here?” Marvin demanded. He was clearly agitated with having been awakened by this.
Marvin was one of only two black guys that lived in the entire dorm. And he was unlucky enough to be assigned to our wing, the rowdiest on campus. He was cool for the most part, he tolerated our bullshit better than most would have, most memorably during a dorm meeting when he said:
“What da fuck are you guys doing getting kegs on Wednesdays? Kegs on Wednesdays? At least wait ’til Thursday c’mon.”
This, when possession of a keg on campus was an expellable first offense.
I picked myself up off the floor and began composing myself enough to answer when Barry interrupted.
“Someone put a dead bird on my door!!!!” Barry exclaimed hysterically, pleading his case to Marvin in his slurred, sloppy drunkenness. He repeated this like four or five times.
I lost it again. I couldn’t help it and I couldn’t possibly muster two clear words at this point. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I was sent to my room and ordered not to come out for the rest of the night. At least for the moment I was safe from Barry’s wrath once he finally figured out who it was that was fucking with him.
Marvin sent Barry to bed and instructed Juan to not let him out.
For this disruption no one was written up. Marvin was pretty cool for the most part, as long as campus safety wasn’t called because of our antics in the dorms. Barry repeatedly threatened that one morning I was going to wake up next to a flat dead crow in my bed, so I slept with my door locked and one eye open for the next month. Other than that, there were no long term repercussions for my prank.
