April Fools Day Pranks for Trailer Park Residents

With April Fools Day right around the corner, it's time to start planning which pranks to pull on the neighbors. The best pranks are done with the cartography of your particular trailer park in mind. Is it a huge park with rows and rows of speedbump-festooned lanes, or is it just one dusty, trailer-lined driveway that dead-ends into some dumpsters?

Scope out the victim trailers ahead of time for prank props in the yard, such as large appliances, furniture, shrubbery, and statues. Keep safety first at all times! If your prank involves projectiles, a little pre-launch inspection greatly improves your aim. Use explosives with care and common sense. Choose a detonation site that gives you the most bang for your buck. And don't aim a window slingshot at something if you don't intend to shoot it.

Window Slingshot
You will need: One bicycle innertube, one pair of scissors, two big screws, and one big screwdriver.

Instructions: Pull the screen off the front window closest to the victim trailer so the splatter pattern makes it looks like the ammo came in from the street and not your trailer. Cut the bicycle innertube in half with scissors. Screw one end of the innertube to each side of the window. Water balloons make great window-slingshot ammo, but if you want to get creative, try launching rotted fruit, canned peaches, bags of mud and other squishy ammo.

Giant Yard Slingshot
You will need: One monster-truck tire innertube, a box cutter, two fenceposts, two gigantic screws, one gigantic screwdriver, a heavy-duty stapler, and the butt cut out of an old pair of jeans.

Instructions: Clear any debris (including fencing material) from between the two fenceposts. Cut the truck innertube in half with the box cutter. Cut the innertube in half again, and staple the jeans-butt in the middle of the two innertube ends, forming a pouch to launch ammo. Screw one end of the innertube to each fencepost. This gizmo can launch a watermelon.

Trailer Tsunami
You will need: One trailer with a window left open a crack, and one garden hose hooked up to the neighbor's hose bib.

Instructions: Wait until the victim/neighbor leaves his trailer, preferably for several hours. Stick the garden hose where it will fit through a window into the trailer and turn on the water. When the neighbor returns and opens the front door, s/he will be greeted with a tsunami, and probably a much cleaner trailer, too.

Yard Washer Planter
You will need: One great big bag of potting soil, one garden hose hooked up to a hose bib nearby, marijuana seeds.

Instructions: Under the cover of darkness when no one's looking, creep into the neighbor's yard with the bag of potting soil. Dump the potting soil into any dead, rusty clothes washer(s) sitting in the yard. Plant your marijuana seeds and slowly moisten the soil using the garden hose. Continue sneaking over in the middle of the night 1-3 times a week as necessary to keep the soil moist. You can substitute regular old flower seeds from the Wal-Mart garden department for the pot seeds, but flowers won't get the same reaction from your neighbor that a washerful of pot plants will.

Ringing in April Fool's Day with a Bang
You will need: Cigarettes, a lighter, a metal shrimp skewer, and some explosives, like cherry bombs, M-80s, and Black Cat firecrackers.

Instructions: Poke a hole about halfway up a cigarette with the skewer. Light the cigarette with the lighter. Insert the fuse into the skewer-hole. Plant the device under the neighbor's trailer at 11:55 pm on March 31. Five minutes later, at exactly midnight on April Fool's Day, it explodes. Do four or five and plant them under several neighbors' trailers for surround-sound fun!

Dead Guy Under the Trailer
You will need: One pair of jeans, one old pair of boots, and the Sunday newspaper.

Instructions: Stuff the boots into the legs of the jeans. Wad up the Sunday newspaper piece by piece and stuff into the boots and jeans until it looks like a real person's lower legs and feet. Go outside your trailer and yank two or three pieces of skirting off the bottom, creating a hole underneath. Stick the stuffed jeans and boots into the hole under the trailer with the boots sticking out, and wait for the neighbors to show up.