Why do fools fall so hard on April 1?
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Hey, you, Prince Albert in a can, go sit over there with Mr. Stiff, Mr. Graves and all the April Fools' Day has-beens.
That also goes for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's meatball rolling contest on the steps of the Allegheny County Courthouse -- as announced in a flier distributed Wednesday by the Spaghetti Warehouse Restaurant.
No, something tells us it's all happening at the zoo, where, on this officially designated day for pranksters, hordes of unsuspecting victims will be calling for a Mr. Lyon, Mr. Bear or Sally Mander.
Getting someone to call the zoo is the oldest trick in the book -- and also the most enduringly popular one, according to Alex Boese, who monitors all manner of pranks on his website, the Museum of Hoaxes: museumofhoaxes.com.
Even though one recent survey found most executives frowning on such pranks in a struggling economy, zoos are bracing for an onslaught today.
"We are bombarded with calls on April 1 from people asking to speak to Ms. Ella Phant, Mr. Bear and so on," said Tracy Gray, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Zoo. "We just gently tell them they've reached a zoo, and then we ask, is the person who gave you that message with you now? And are they laughing?"
Usually, they are, she says, but once she had a call from a state police officer seeking a Mr. Lion who, he had been told, had information involving a homicide.
"The trooper was not happy when I explained what was going on," Ms. Gray said.
Most top-10 April Fools' lists usually include things like prank calls ("You have Prince Albert in a can? Let him out! He can't breathe!"), putting salt in coffee, goldfish in the watercooler, gluing coffee cups to desks and other sidesplitting antics, although for those who spend a lot of time on the Internet, "rickrolling" seems to be the coming thing.
First Published April 1, 2010 12:00 am
