Posted 6/24/2006 04:35:00 PM by Douglas

A good practical joke is worth its weight in gold. Not only can they be devastating if cleverly implemented, but the payback they incite is the stuff legends are made from. Some of you might remember from January, 2004 about the guy that wrapped his buddy's apartment in aluminum foil, down to each CD and individual coins in his change bowl. Well, Luke Trerice, payback's a bitch. Welcome to your hamster cage:

A practical joker got a taste of revenge when friends turned part of his apartment into a human-sized hamster cage, complete with shredded newspaper bedding, a six-foot exercise wheel and a giant water bottle.

"It was a lot of work, but it was one of those cases where you do it because you have to," said Keith Jewell, a longtime friend and neighbor who engineered Monday's hamster-cage prank on Luke Trerice.

Trerice, 28, had it coming: In 2004, he enlisted others to help him encase another friend's apartment and most of his belongings in aluminum foil.

The victim of that prank, Chris Kirk, spent nearly two years cleaning up the meticulous coating of foil, which was wrapped around everything from his toilet and CD collection to the individual coins in his spare change.

A giant ball of foil still sits in the basement of Kirk's former apartment building.

The revenge plotting began immediately, and even though Kirk has since moved to Colombia, Jewell and others finished the job for him.

Trerice, who once said he would be insulted if there was no attempt at payback, also was waiting to see what his friends would come up with.

And thus the spirit of the practical joke is preserved. No payback would have been much, much worse, although the foil thing is funnier.