A good practical joke to pull on a friend while walking in the countryside, if visiting an exotic continent where he isn’t familiar with the local fauna, at least, is to tie a six-foot length of string to a large twig and secretly attach it to his belt. Once that’s done, you should tap him on the shoulder and warn him he is being stalked by a “deadly branch snake”, one of the three most venomous and aggressive reptiles in the world. Keep a straight face while telling him this and try to look as worried and fearful as possible so that he is fully convinced.
Naturally, as your buddy begins to move away from the area, the twig will follow right behind him, wriggling “menacingly” through the grass and with any luck, he will panic and break into a run.
To frighten him even more, by this time you should be screaming for help and waving your arms frantically above your head, while warning him, in a loud, shrill voice, that the snake is almost upon him and that no anti-venom for this particular viper exists. Make it very clear that a single bite and he will be as dead as the proverbial doornail in ten agonising minutes, shortly after his face has turned black and his tongue has swollen to the size of a half-inflated rugby ball. Which fate, no amount of desperate poison-sucking-out, or tourniquets will save him from.
Driven to a dribbling frenzy, your mucker will take to his heels and run and run, crying, pooping his pants and gabbling madly, until you finally lose sight of him completely. Of course, with no possible way he can outdistance the branch snake, short of ripping off his strides and hurling them into a bush, he will eventually drop to the floor exhausted, freeze in the foetal position from sheer terror and very likely black out entirely.
At this point, when you stumble across his unconscious body, you can wake him up by urinating on his face and then explain that the whole thing had simply been a jolly wheeze on your part. He is likely to be a bit peeved at first, but then will see the funny side and congratulate you on your convincing gag. That’s if some big hairy thing with fangs hasn’t got to him first and killed and eaten him.
Should that be the case, you will likely only discover an odd tuft of your pal’s scalp, a few scattered teeth and one or two gnawed bones. This will mean that your amusing scam has backfired somewhat and that it might be best if you kept quiet about the whole affair.
Alternatively, if your easily fooled friend has been badly mauled, but is still breathing, finish him off with the put-them-out-of-their-misery attachment on your Swiss army knife. Be sure to keep the wounds irregular and in keeping with him having been savaged by one or more large critters. Don't want some interfering jungle Miss Marple catching you out, after all. Then you can fly home and driven insane by guilt and remorse, hack your family into bloody kebabs with a garden hoe, or other sharp-edged tool, before being shot dead through your kitchen window by a trigger-happy police marksman.
Dear oh dear, and all because your gullible chum was stupid enough to run away from a harmless bit of stick in the first place. Let’s face it, daft sod deserved to die.
And your nagging wife and her parasite children.
I also know a practical joke about a fatal untreatable disease, but that involves drugging them first so you can put the required green and yellow marks all over their bodies with felt tip pens. Trouble with that one is, sometimes you are a tad too heavy-handed with the drugging part of the exercise and they never wake up. Where’s the fun in that? I found it a complete waste of effort.
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