March 29, 2008

Not too long ago, I was admiring the gnomes over at Moxie’s page and it reminded me of a prank my little brother, Chris, pulled on my dad a few years back. I wasn’t there to witness/enjoy it - but laughed my ass off when he told me about it. I asked Chris if he’d be so kind to retell it. He did, and here it is.

The history of the horse-napping of Stony Pony

When dad moved into his house, he acquired “Stony Pony” by default. The original owner wanted to take Stony with him, but dad insisted that it stay. From that point on it became kind of a joke and we made sure to always talk about it. We also made sure to take a few pics of the kids riding Stony.

My wife, Cindy, and I were on our way home from a weekend excursion and got to talking about Stony. Somehow the idea came up that it would be funny if we horse-napped him and left a ransom note. That led to all of the ideas of taking him to different locations around Nashville and superimposing Stony into pictures of other exotic locations. That further led to the brainstorm to create a website called WhereIsStony.com - which would provide weekly updates and pictures.

When I got back home, I discussed the plans with a couple of co-conspirators and the plan was underway. We actually had 5 possible plans - all of which were going to be centered around dad being away at work:

• Plan A - If Janet (the stepmother) was not at home, we just needed to put him in the truck and go.
  Plan A failed, Janet was home.
• Plan B - If Janet was home, call a neighbor and try to get them to get her to go over there long enough to abduct Stony.
  Plan B failed, neighbor wasn’t interested in getting involved.
• Plan C - If Janet was home, park the truck on the road behind dad’s and abduct Stony through the woods.
  Plan C failed, concerns of someone reporting us to the law.
• Plan D - If Janet was home, I would go to the door and distract her long enough for co-conspirators #1 and #2 to load Stony in the truck.
• Plan E - If Janet was home, tell her the plan and ask her not to tell dad.

After all was said and done, we went with Plan D.

I called co-conspirator #1’s phone and told him when I hang up, it’s go-time. I then went to the door and Janet answered. Upon answering, I told her that I was there to get some information off of dad’s computer so I could buy him a hardware upgrade for his birthday. This was risky since dad’s office was in the bonus room which overlooked the driveway - which just happened to be where my truck was parked. But it was the only viable excuse.

Fortune would have it that they had just moved dad’s office to the other end of the house, so we were home-free. I then proceeded to go to dad’s office and goof around with his computer until I got the call from co-conspirator #1 that they were done.

After about 10 minutes I received said phone call, but the news was bad. All I heard were the words “abort mission! abort mission!”

Upon hearing that, I asked what was wrong - to which I was informed Stony was too heavy for co-conspirators #1 and #2 to lift on the back of my truck. At that point, Plan D was rendered a failure and I had to resort to Plan E. I told Janet what was going on and she got a huge kick out of it.

We then went outside to check on co-conspirators #1 and #2 who were worn out from trying to lift the 700+ pound horse onto the back of my truck. Between the 3 of us, we were finally able to hoist it just high enough to get it on my tailgate. Co-conspirator #1 and I then stood on the tailgate to maneuver it the rest of the way into the truck bed. At that point one of the 2 cables holding up the tailgate snapped and we both jumped to keep the other side from snapping - which would have caused Stony to drop to the ground in pieces.

Eventually, we got Stony in the truck and headed home with our prize. During the process, we took a few minutes of pre-abduction video discussing our plans. Co-conspirators then got some actual real-time footage of the attempted horse-napping.

Just for good measure, we also took a few more minutes of co-conspirator #1 riding Stony once we got him home.

The next day, we coerced Cindy’s sister into placing a phone call to dad so he wouldn’t know it was us. I scripted out the call to be nothing more than “We’ve got your donkey and will be in touch.” That’s when all of the additional fun was supposed to happen - like taking Stony places, snapping his picture, and starting the website. Since he was too heavy to take anywhere, everything else just sort of fell through and nothing else happened.

Dad came over a couple of months later and informed us of the abduction. He was suspicious of us at first but we played it off very well and, by the time he left, he was blaming it on his cable guy who had made previous comments about wanting Stony.

Another 9 months passed and dad came out again. Since it was evident that I wasn’t going to follow through with any of the other Stony-related activities, we went ahead and told him of the evil deed. We all got a great laugh. On top of that, Janet had done a good job of keeping our secret.

Two years later, we’re now stuck with Stony because dad doesn’t want him back. Thus, the current plan of taking Stony back one day when dad isn’t suspecting anything, and positioning him so he’s staring in dad’s bedroom window.

Chris

(P.S. Video clips are coming. )

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