A mischevious son who filled his family’s water fountain with washing up liquid was left in hysterics after catching on camera the moment his dad realised he had been pranked.
Lachie Scarsbrook, 22, had been taking part in daily challenges with his friends during lockdown to beat their boredom when he was tasked to pull a prank on 27 April.
His poor dad Charles Scarsbrook, 50, became the victim of his prank after Lachie had the ingenious idea of filling the family water fountain with washing up liquid.
Charles, who co-owns a pottery company, had only welcomed the fountain to the family home a month prior to lockdown and considered the water feature a prized possession.
Lachie recorded the steps of his prank in a video uploaded to his TikTok account, removing the family fish Coke from the fountain first and then filming as the fountain slowly filled up with frothy bubbles.
Hiding in a sack in the garden, the masters student managed to capture the moment his dad visited the fountain to feed the fish.
Unaware he was being filmed, Charles let out a hilarious stream of expletives in reaction as he realised he had been pranked, resulting in a very entertaining video.
Lachie said: “The prank came about from an idea my dad actually planted in my head.
“He was worried one of the neighbours down the street (who is a bit of a prankster) was going to put bubbles in the fountain!
“During lockdown, my friends and I have been playing a kind of survivor style game where each day we had a new challenge that we had to do at home and film it.
“On this day, the challenge was to “pull the best prank on someone in your bubble”, and the opportunity to make my dad’s worst nightmare come to light was way too tempting!
“I was only hiding for about 10 minutes because being in lockdown for so many weeks you get to learn each other’s timetables, and he would stick to his fish feeding regime religiously which was just before the 1pm national address from Jacinda.
“I was trying so hard to contain my laughter because anyone who knows my dad knows that reaction is so out of character!
“I was really hoping for an extreme response because I wanted to win the challenge, which I did!
“It took me at least three hours to clean out all the soup suds and then I posted it to TikTok and checked my phone an hour later to thousands of notifications! It just blew up!”
Lachie usually lives in Dunedin whilst studying for his masters degree at the University of Otago but had moved back home in Temuka for lockdown as did all of his siblings.
With lockdown restrictions changing on 28 April, Lachie was able to return to Dunedin but is still keeping in touch with his dad who has loved the attention on social media for the prank.
Lachie said: “My dad, who was slowly getting over the fact I had ruined his fountain, kept asking me about the view count and likes (not really knowing what they meant) but it became clear a few days later he was TikTok famous!
“Now that our lockdown has finished, I still get the occasional text from him asking about the view count and literally everyone in New Zealand has seen the video!
“I also wanna stress that the fish in the video is okay – I have been keeping fish for the past five years and have a degree in Zoology so people can sleep easy!”