Pranks

When we got back to Mpala, we found out that our friend Eric (PhD student from Utah State and my academic cousin...his advisor had the same advisor as my advisor) was throwing a big goat roast party down at River Camp.  He would be slaughtering and roasting 2 goats and buying several cases of beer.  They have an awesome giant fire pit at river camp and the band Paddy and the Dik Diks would be providing the entertainment.  The band consisted of Eric, Pat (the undergrad in our lab), and Kaia.  I wanted Elisha to join since she's good at guitar, but she claims she's not.

The roast was not without Mpolitics and drama.  The director ordered that no field assistants (the Kenyans) would be allowed to attend.  We were all upset by this, especially considering it wasn't Mpala paying for the roast, we were all paying for it.  There were other strange rules, like a 10pm curfew and such.  So many strange things that it sort of stressed Eric out.  But the goat roast was a huge success, we had tons of fun, and we all sang along with Paddy and the Dik diks.

A couple days after the roast, I was feeling in a prank mood.  Eric is a big jokester, which is one of the reasons why I like him so much.  Eric had just texted Pat while I was in the lab with Pat.  I realized that Eric didn't have my phone number, so Pat gave me Eric's number and I texted him this: "This is Margaret. We need to talk about the goat roast and your inability to follow rules.  When are you available?"  Margaret is the director.  If I had received that text, I would have been scared, discussed it with my friends, and then responded.  But we watched Eric storm out of his office in a bee-line for the directors office.  So I had to run out after him.  He said, "you'll never believe the text I just got" and she showed me.  I then showed him the sent message from my phone, and he proceeded to throw his phone at me.  And thus started the prank war.

Knowing that Eric would be up to something, I decided to take offensive first.  I had been having problems with people not reading my "please shut the door to keep monkeys out of the lab" signs, so I figured (with the help of Elisha) that I needed more noticeable signs.  So I made a sign that had a picture of Paddy and the Dik Diks.  A normal picture of Patrick and then a photoshopped picture of Eric (twice) in speedos.  Also, Eric had been getting irritated with the princeton undergrads taking all the avocados before he even had a chance to get some.  And the one time they had icecream, there was no icecream left by the time his place in line got there b/c the princeton kids had taken giant bowls.  So I placed a photo in the dining area with some wise words from Eric with him again photoshopped onto a strange body.  The next morning, at breakfast, when Eric saw the signs, he said that he would make my breakfast for me.  He took a banana and smashed it into my eggs.

That same morning when we went to start Kermit, it wouldn't start (Eric?).  Elisha and the field assistants got out of the car to push us backwards so that I could push start the car.  As Elisha started pushing, she screamed a little and stopped pushing.  Sitting in the fender of our land cruiser was a dead dik-dik.  One that Eric had placed on our car, but at first we had worried we had hit it the day before.

Many threatened pranks were uttered back and forth.  Threats to tempt vervet monkeys into vehicles or bandas so that they would poop everywhere, or threats of putting dead animals inside the cars.  Of course these were empty threats as we'd never do anything that bad.

For our last prank, since Eric had celebrated his 10th anniversary the day before, Elisha helped me decorate his vehicle.  We wrote with duct tape "Still Married" on the back of his car, tied streamers to his car, tied empty beer cans to his car, and then TP'd the inside of his car.  We actually thought it was a sweet prank, and he liked it.

My final prank; however, was to send a couple pictures to his wife for her to put up in the house when he got home.  One of the pictures came about b/c he had admitted that he and his wife had a joke about Eric showing his crack and that they actually had a framed picture in their house of him showing plumber's crack.

It was definitely a sad day for us when Eric had to say goodbye to go back to his wife and daughter.

One of the fliers we put up in the dining hall

dead dik dik in the grill of Kermit

Dead dik dik that Eric put in the grill of our land cruiser

How we decorated Eric's car

Flier I told his wife to hang in his house prior to his arrival

Other flier I had his wife hang

one of the fliers we put up in the lab to remind people to keep the doors shut to keep out the monkeys.  Pat on the left and 2 Erics on the right