Snipe hunt

From Freepedia

A snipe hunt is usually one of a class of practical jokes that involves experienced people making fun of newcomers by giving them an impossible or imaginary task.

Inexperienced campers or hunters are told about a bird or animal called the snipe as well as a (usually ridiculous) method of catching it, such as running around the woods carrying a bag or making strange noises. Since the supposed snipe doesn't exist, the hunt never succeeds, no matter how foolishly the newcomer acts.

There actually is a species of bird called a snipe, but it is found primarily in wetlands and the joke is invariably played in wooded areas.

Tolstoy's novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina portray real snipe hunts.

Variations

There are many variations on this prank, including:

• A fool's errand in the UK involves sending newcomers on a work site to fetch nonexistent tools, such as a left-handed screwdriver, a can of striped paint, fallopian tubing (a popular prank in hospitals), an alternating current battery, a tube of elbow grease, a box of bubbles or box of holes, a skirting board ladder, or a 'round tuit'.

• The long stand in UK schools involves a teacher sending a pupil—usually picked for being annoying as much as for gullibility—to another teacher for "a long stand". When the pupil arrives and delivers the request, they are asked to wait—usually in full view of the class.

• In American schools, a new student is often sent to find something that does not exist, such as a swimming pool located on an upper floor of a building. An actual occurrence of the top floor swimming pool prank, in which new students were being sold tickets to the nonexistent swimming pool, was related by Guy L. Steele in the 1983 publication of The Hacker's Dictionary.

• In the Boy Scouts of America it is common for first-time attendees at a camporee (a large weekend event) to be sent after a "left-handed smoke-shifter," supposedly a branch with a fan on the end used to deflect smoke from a campfire. Another such gag practiced by Californian Scouts is to send them looking for a "bacon stretcher." Another common gag in the Boy Scouts is to have a group of unsuspecting Scouts gather around a campfire to do an "ancient Indian chant." The chant goes something like "OWATTA AS SIAM" and is chanted louder and faster until it suddenly dawns on everyone what it is they are chanting, at which point the group usually cracks up in laughter.

• In the Air Force a variant involves new airmen being sent to the commissary to purchase a bottle of prop wash—prop wash is actually a term for turbulent airflow coming from the aft end of a propeller. Other military snipe hunts include sending someone for keys to a drop zone, box of grid squares, a length of flight line, blinker fluid, winter air for tires, sparkplugs for a diesel engine, canopy lights, BA-1100 November (Balloon) type batteries, TR-2E (tree) or ST-1 (stone) weapons equipment, "afterburner flints," and lightstick batteries. Sometimes comissaries will get into the act and prepare things like bottles labeled "prop wash", and so on to sell to unsuspecting victims.

• A US Army variation is to send a soldier in search of a Priky-7, a non-existent object that sounds like an older military slang term for a radio (PRC-# is part of the nomenclature for many radios). After being sent to several non-commissioned officers (i.e., sergeants), he is finally sent to a Sergeant First Class (an E-7 pay grade). That sergeant explains why he isn't looking for a prick E-7, but a Priky-8, and is sent looking for the company's First Sergeant (an E-8 pay grade).

• The golden rivet is a favourite in many navies around the world, as are radar contacts. A bucket of propeller pitch is also popular.

• In Dutch offices, newcomers are often sent to fetch the "folder of missing documents", or a "plinth ladder".

• New employees at Brazilian firms may be asked to do tasks like fetching "round envelopes" for sending "circular letters" (memos), but most such practical jokes lose their meaning when translated to English. Another variation is to have the newcomer try to file a document in a "circular file cabinet". Later, they explain that the file cabinet is actually a waste basket (the open end of it is usually round, thus the name). This tradition is dwindling, as most companies strongly disapprove of it.

• Housing construction crews in the USA occasionally like to send new hires to the business on a hunt for a "rafter jack" or a "board stretcher".

• In auto mechanics, a newcomer may be sent to find a nonexistent item like "frequency grease", or "turn signal fluid" (which is claimed to be a fluid that facilitates the flow of electrons through the turn signal flasher relay in a car).

• Firefighters are notorious for subjecting rookie firefighters to these sort of pranks, such as sending a rookie to feed a nonexistent "owl" who lives somewhere in the firehouse, then spraying him with water while he is trying to find the owl. Many of them are related in The Little Red Book of Firehouse Pranks by Jeff Hibbard (ISBN 0966781007)

• In old theater companies, new and gullible stage hands would be asked to go wash the colored gel papers that fit over stage lights. When the papers were still made out of gelatin, they would melt under water, and the stagehands would return in hysterics, thinking they had done something wrong. Colored gels are now made out of cellophane, and the joke has been lost.

• In German handcraft newcomers are sent to fetch a "Siemens Lufthaken" which translates as air hook from the company Siemens. Often this joke is made when trying to drill a hole into the wall turns out to be impossible. Then air hooks are required to attach the painting or board or whatever to the wall.

Popular culture

Variations of snipe hunts are a common plot device in comic literature, including:

• In the premiere episode of the US cartoon Doug, the titular character is pressured by bully Roger Klotz into searching a local pond for a "neematoad." The name is most likely a reference to the Roundworm, a member of the phylum Nematoda.
• In the Machinima webcomic Red vs Blue, Private Donut is sent after Elbow Grease and Headlight Fluid.
• In an episode of the cartoon Ren and Stimpy, the pair join the Scouts and are sent on a snipe hunt which Stimpy sucessfully completes to Ren's chagrin.
• In an early episode of King of the Hill, Bobby and his friends are sent on a snipe hunt and wind up killing an endangered whooping crane, believing it to be a snipe.
• In the first episode of Spongebob Sqarepants, Spongebob is sent off to look for a nonexistent Spatula, which he finds.