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My husband's family had some great jokers. When Grandpa was working the night shift at the mill, he enjoyed coming home to a warm kitchen with a lamp left on low and a tasty dessert on the table. Grandma loved to tell about the time she and a friend cut circles of cotton quilt batting and stacked them to make a layer cake. They put the layers of batting together with homemade fudge, swirled it decoratively over the whole cake, laid a knife by the plate and hid around the corner to watch when Grandpa came home. He sawed unsuccessfully for a long time before their giggles gave them away. Then he peeled off the fudge, ate it and went to bed.

Sometime later he got even with a bag full of sparrows (evidently wild birds weren't protected at that time). He convinced Grandma that sparrows made a treat comparable to pigeon pie. He had to hurry off to his night shift, but he showed her how to skin a bird and cut the breast away.

A sparrow breast is smaller than a marble, and she didn't have enough marbles to cover the bottom of the bowl before she got suspicious. A neighbor revealed that yes indeedy, George was playing a trick on the little woman. She made a tiny pie from the hard marbles, seasoned very liberally with pepper, and stood over him until he'd finished the last bite. It was accompanied by many soothing drinks of cold water.

After Russ and I were married, our own family didn't have time for such labor-intensive practical jokes, although we did have some memorable April Fools' Day tricks that went way beyond the boys' fake dog poo, plastic barf puddle and that tired old plastic-spider-on-the-toilet-paper-roll gag. Instead of spending hours frosting cotton batting, we opted for a joke that could be recycled year after year.

Our knee-brace box filled the bill perfectly. The first time I used it to hold a Christmas gift, the recipient exclaimed, "Oh, goody, a knee-brace! I've wanted one forever!" so we always saved the box for the next occasion. It was most fun when used for a tiny, delicate gift and weighted with rocks, with clinking old spoons for sound effect.

In our older daughter's family, a Barbie's leg was their knee-brace box. One spring day our younger daughter drove up from Portland to see her niece Caity play softball. In the high school parking lot she picked up a grisly find ... the shapely, bare, dismembered leg of a Barbie doll. After the game Auntie handed it to Caity with, "Good game! Here's a congratulations gift." Caity tossed it in the back of her pickup and that seemed to be the end of it.

Barbie's leg was gaily gift-wrapped for a summer birthday, and that winter it was plucked out of grandson Steve's Christmas stocking. It continued to be found in strange places ... part of a brown-bag lunch; in a hiking backpack. A suitcase unpacked in Hawaii revealed the grotesque limb beneath a swimsuit. Probably the most laughs Barbie earned came at the time Caity's teen brother pulled the almost obscenely sexy leg from some innocent-seeming container in front of friends.

The last time Barbie's leg made an appearance was when Caity got ready to board a plane in Bolivia to return home last summer. She'd brought her water bottle for the long wait in the airport, knowing she'd have to empty it before boarding the plane. Waiting in line at security, she pulled it from her backpack to take a long drink and empty the rest. Something hard hit her lips ... Barbie's leg. Caity fished it out and stuck it in her carry-on, and still hasn't decided who was responsible. Her mom and brother had been down to visit her at Christmas, and must have enlisted one of her friends to plant the last-minute stowaway.

I think we have another family heirloom of the knee-brace box/Barbie's leg type: the solar-powered hummingbird I ordered from a garden catalog. It would be lovely, I thought, its ghostly pallor floating above the flowers on a summer evening. I didn't read the description closely enough. Strobe-light fashion, it flashes vivid red and blue, like a tiny alien cop car hovering over the garden. Its tackiness makes pink plastic yard flamingoes seem like Martha Stewart décor.

The next night after it was installed, I was drawn to the bedroom by a mysterious pulsating red and blue glow. The hummingbird had found a new home.

Instead of giving the bird to Goodwill, I think I'll keep it. Placed under the spare room bed, it could welcome guests ... or scare away the ones who stay too long. Think how it would liven up a sedate, perfectly planned evening patio party. Hmmm. I wonder if it would fit in the knee-brace box? It could be our family heirloom joke gift. Not as much fun as a chocolate-frosted cotton cake, but not nearly as much work, either!

* Donna Scofield is a freelance writer whose articles, columns and short fiction stories have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines. The longtime Yakima resident is retired after working as a secretary and office manager in Yakima School District elementary schools. She has raised two sons and two daughters.