Prank War 2014 – Rats

Okay, since some people saw my friend Sam Bates’ Facebook post earlier today (the one where she called Steven and I maniacal, little geniuses and vowed to exact revenge) and wondered what the heck was going on, I figured I would fill in a few holes in the story. So here goes…

Sam Bates and Danielle Beebe are quite the practical jokers. I hadn’t even known Beebe a week before she hid a remote control spider in my desk at work. After that, the prank war was on. Any of the really crazy photos you saw me post last year (with things in jello, banana bombs, people sneaking up on each other wearing rubber horse heads, etc.) likely involved Sam or Beebe.

Now that we no longer work together, the prank war has hit home. The girls had free reign in our house while we were in New York, and we came home to find some giant, hairy plastic spiders hidden in drawers and under pillows around our house.

Ha! Good one, ladies.

It’s not that we were letting it slide exactly, we just like to take our time when it comes to plotting our revenge.

Saturday, Beebe arrived at our house bright and early to sell some things on our garage sale. Sam and Katiana arrived shortly after to help keep Cadence occupied. When Bates and Beebs disappeared into the house for awhile, I knew something was likely up, but didn’t think much about it. Later, after the sale had been cleaned up and everyone had gone home, Steven and I found the first of the little black rubber rats the girls had so thoughtfully hidden around the house. I found one in the doughnut box on the counter. Steve found one in the silverware drawer. I found one hiding in my coffee stash.

Later that evening, I was even startled when I stepped out of the shower and saw one peering at me from behind the toilet.

We decided it was time for a little revenge.

It started with a text on Sunday evening: “Hey…question for you both, and Kat since she was here too…did you guys notice Electra eating anything weird or acting strange yesterday? She has been coughing and gagging today, and threw up some black stuff. She has never done anything like it before. Maybe she got into something yesterday during the sale? I just remember her lying in the yard a lot. Never saw her eat anything. We are thinking we are going to call the vet and try to get her in.”

Nope, they never noticed anything.

I asked Sam if she would be on call to babysit in case we needed to run Electra to the vet during the night. She agreed.

This morning, I got a message from Sam asking how Electra was. I spun an even wilder tale about how she seemed okay Sunday evening, but then woke us up coughing and gagging in the middle of the night. I talked about how we got up this morning and she refused to eat (which should have been a big clue that the story was bogus).

I mixed together a concoction of water, ketchup, and cut up pieces of one of the rubber rats and sent along a little photo, telling Bates and Beebe that we’d taken her to the vet and were waiting to hear if she needed surgery for some kind of obstruction because she’d thrown up a bunch of black chunks and red bloody looking stuff.

I give you Exhibit A…

Yeah, we’re mean, but when you start a prank war with the Romanos, you better watch yourself.

There was 15 or 20 minutes of silence before Bates started blowing up my phone with a full confession and apology in texts. I managed to get the location of the last few rats out of her, and then told her I needed to call the vet with an update.

Instead, I texted Stevie to let him know our plan had worked, and then spent a little time arranging this photo to call out the pranksters and let them know the tables had turned…

I have no doubt that we’re eventually going to be the victims of some pretty epic prank war retaliation but, for now, we’ll enjoy our victory.