Swiped and Sent on an Oddball Adventure

Miss Abby’s monkey puppet paused for a photo at the Academy Awards. David Stockham’s right shoe traveled to Buckingham Palace. The porcelain clown statue that once decorated a doorstep was snatched and sent on a tour of L.A.

One day, they were ordinary objects living happily with their owners. The next, they were living it up without their owners’ permission, having been stolen as part of a practical joke so well established that an international organization is now dedicated to the concept.

The “roaming gnome” prank, as it is known, is an idea that’s as old as the hills, or at least the mid-’80s--an adventure that falls in that peculiar place between high crime and low humor. An innocent item is kidnapped, then sent on a whirlwind adventure. In lieu of ransom notes: pictures and postcards. “Having a wonderful time,” they say. “Wish you were here.”

It’s a practical joke tradition that appeals to people with a taste for mischief and time on their hands--one that has extended beyond everyday lawn ornaments to include pretty much anything that catches the prankster’s fancy and gets someone’s goat. When Mike Biggie received Marvin the Singing Monkey via priority mail, he was given a simple instruction: “Send a couple pictures of Marvin in front of some recognizable landmarks.”

Biggie, who received the stuffed animal from a friend of his father-in-law, was happy to oblige. The 35-year-old Santa Monica resident took his new primate pal to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, Santa Monica Pier and the Democratic National Convention--where he staged an anti-fur protest. And, as requested, he sent pictures. Lots of pictures.

They were addressed to Miss Abby, a lounge singer at the now-defunct Cheryl’s Le Cabaret Piano Bar in Hilton Head, S.C.--a woman Biggie has not met and does not intend to meet. Miss Abby is the owner of Marvin the Monkey, who was stolen in September 2000 by a club regular who had listened to the singer’s ventriloquist rendition of “Down by the Riverside” one too many times. The thief then sent the monkey to Biggie, who, in turn, has been dutifully mailing Miss Abby choreographed photos with handwritten notes from her puppet for the past year and a half.

“Once I opened up the envelope with this little squished puppet inside, I could see that it would be a lot of fun,” said Biggie, a set painter for the movies.

Shortly after receiving Marvin, he rigged a wire-armature and copper-pipe skeleton for the puppet so he could pose the monkey in various scenarios. The stuffed chimp now owns about 30 outfits, among them a tuxedo (which he wore to the Oscars), a rain suit (for a trip to Maine) and several Hawaiian shirts (for the beach)--pictures of which have been mailed to Miss Abby with no return address.

Dave Stockham, 29, has also been receiving mail from an unidentified source--his long-lost running shoe.

Stockham was living in Chicago when the right shoe in a pair of $125 sneakers was stolen from his balcony. About a month later he began receiving letters written from the shoe’s point of view.

At first, he suspected some friends who lived in the building of the hoax, “but people got pretty angry at me that I kept accusing them of stealing the shoe,” said Stockham, who now lives in Utah. “I started to wonder: Did a pigeon fly away with it?”

He got his answer in June 1999, when he received a letter from “Righty.” In it, Righty told Stockham that he missed “Lefty” but that he planned to travel around the world, walking “a mile on another person’s foot to see if life is any better.” It was postmarked St. Petersburg, Fla. Stockham didn’t know anyone there.

Two months later he received a second letter, postmarked Hollywood. This time it was accompanied by a Polaroid of Neve Campbell wearing Righty, who claimed to be having an affair with the young actress.

Stockham didn’t hear from the shoe again for another two months, by which time Righty had made its way across the Atlantic to London. There, a local street artist sketched its portrait in front of Buckingham Palace. Stockham received the drawing along with a four-page letter detailing the shoe’s trips, travails and interest in the city’s rave scene. That was the last he heard from his shoe.

“It’s a great story to tell,” said Stockham, who often fields inquiries from his friends as to Righty’s whereabouts. “I have no idea who did it.”

Most likely it was a friend or family member, say sociologists who study humor. “Nice” pranks like these usually are. While practical jokes come in all different sizes, strategies and degrees of meanness, ranging from the mildly annoying (e.g., putting orange juice in a milk carton) to some real stinkers (rubbing down a neighbor’s dog with limburger cheese), more often than not, the prankster is acquainted with the victim.

Perpetrated in the spirit of mischievous fun, the “roaming gnome” type of prank is “victim friendly,” said Gary Alan Fine, a Northwestern University professor who has written about the sociology of humor. “It’s really an example of absurdist humor rather than a practical joke,” he said. “Most people would say it’s cute. It’s clever, and it’s going to make the victim laugh rather than make the victim angry.”

But Miss Abby isn’t laughing. She declined to be interviewed for this story, saying only that she thought the prank was funny at first, but now she is mad. According to the monkey’s kidnapper, Miss Abby purchased a replacement monkey, named Melvin, but the show was never quite the same.

Miss Abby did not say whether she would consider pressing charges against the culprits. Meant as a joke or not, possession of stolen property, whether it be a stuffed monkey, running shoe or lawn statue, is against the law--in some cases a felony, and in others a misdemeanor.

In Newark, N.Y., two 18-year-olds claiming to be members of the Garden Gnome Liberation Front are currently facing misdemeanor charges for criminal possession of stolen property. Their offense: stealing 20 garden gnomes and posing them in a baseball field as if they were playing the game.

In the United States, the lawn ornament of choice for appropriation is the pink flamingo. In Europe, it is the gnome--where millions of the clog-footed, pointy-capped creatures stand guard over their owners’ turf. In 1996, the Garden Gnome Liberation Front was formed in France. Two years ago it caused a stir when it disrupted an exhibit in a Paris park: Its members could not resist the lure of 2,000 elfin statues on display. The loosely formed group held its first international congress in Germany earlier this month.

Versions of the prank have played a part in several movies--from “The Full Monty” in 1997 to the current French film “Amelie.” In “Amelie,” the mischievous heroine steals her father’s garden gnome and gives it to a flight attendant, who takes pictures of it near various international landmarks and sends them to Amelie’s perplexed father.

The “roaming gnome” prank goes back to 1986, according to “Curses! Broiled Again! The Hottest Urban Legends Going” (W.W. Norton, 1989). Author Jan Harold Brunvand writes that it sprung up simultaneously in Australia and in England, where a group of traveling oil rig workers temporarily appropriated a gnome and sent its owner postcards before returning it to its yard with a suitcase, sunglasses and a tan.

Part of the inspiration for the prank may have come from “The Red Couch,” a 1984 photo book by Kevin Clarke and Horst Wackerbarth that pictured an enormous red velvet sofa in various precarious situations--perched on a window washer’s platform and sitting on an offshore oil rig, among other things. In turn, “The Red Couch” may have been influenced by California artist Eleanor Antin, who, in the early ‘70s, photographed 100 black rubber boots in various scenarios coast to coast--on their way to church, marching--and printed them on postcards.

It was “The Red Couch” that influenced Ed Vandenberg when he stole a porcelain clown statue from his friends’ porch about four years ago. The Los Feliz artist and his then-girlfriend were looking for a unique way to celebrate their friends’ engagement.

“We had seen the clown on their steps and thought, ‘Yeah. Let’s have a little fun with them and their clown.’ We just walked up, grabbed the clown and ran,” Vandenberg said.

That was the beginning of the statue’s three-month trek around Los Angeles, visiting places that were romantically significant to their newly engaged friends. The clown made stops at the kickball field where the couple had met and at which they became engaged. It also visited a karaoke bar and LAX.

The clown eventually returned to the couple’s doorstep, accompanied by a photo album, though Vandenberg and his accomplice didn’t identify themselves as the thieves until about a week later. Like most pranksters, they struggled to keep from spilling the beans until the prank was over. “I’m not very good at keeping secrets,” Vandenberg said. “I desperately wanted to say when I went up to the house, ‘Isn’t something missing here?’”

Biggie, who has the monkey, has found himself in a similar predicament. He recently learned that the club where Miss Abby performed, and where there was a photo wall devoted to Marvin’s travels, has gone out of business, leaving Biggie with a monkey but nowhere to send his photos.

“It’s really important to me that Abby is seeing the pictures,” said Biggie, whose original plan included Marvin hitchhiking his way back into Miss Abby’s arms in South Carolina. “Much as I love doing the project, it loses so much of its meaning if the woman who owns the monkey isn’t actually getting the pictures.”

Could it be time to return the monkey?