Beloved Pet Centipede Gone Missing! Meet The Merry Pranksters

IRVING PARK — Have you seen Pete?

The missing pet centipede has been AWOL for weeks after escaping from his Irving Park yard. His frantic owners are offering a reward for his safe return: a Ziploc bag of Swedish Fish.

But beware before attempting to capture Pete — he shoots lasers from his eyes.

Seriously?

No, not remotely.

Pete and the "missing" flyers — 40 of them in total — are an elaborate inside joke concocted by a pair of Irving Park neighbors who took a thread on a community Facebook page and brought it to real-world life.

"It was an experiment to see how many people connected the dots," said Amelia Graham, who perpetrated the prank along with Amanda Mejia.

The source of inspiration for Graham and Mejia, neighbors in a two-flat owned by Graham's family: a post to the Irving Park Neighborhood News Facebook page that drew nearly 100 increasingly wacky comments.

That original message, from May 18, included a picture of a mystery bug and a desperate cry for help: "1. What is this? 2. Is it poisonous? 3. How do I get rid of them?"

People immediately began chiming in with an ID of the bug — a centipede — along with stories of their own harrowing encounters with the critter and suggestions for various methods of extermination.

Some of the replies were straightforward, many were not.

"I call them great demons. I've killed one 6 inch one with a spear, because that's what is necessary when it comes to these beasts," wrote one neighbor.

"Yes they will kill you. They shoot lasers from their eyes and are expert at throwing knives," said another.

The level of silliness prompted one neighbor to declare: "This thread is seriously the best."

The post was a welcome departure from usual neighborhood news about break-ins and assaults, Mejia said.

"I think it brought out the good humor in everyone," she said.

To keep the good vibrations going, Graham and Mejia cooked up the idea for Pete, including the creation of a bona fide email address for "tips" (missingcentipede@gmail.com).

"As an adult, you don't often have a chance to have ridiculous fun," said Graham.

The two enlisted Mejia's 9-year-old daughter, Lourdes, to help hang the flyers, which they taped outside of popular businesses like Alps and even on the drive-through speakers at McDonald's.

"She was giddy," Mejia said. "We were just sitting there laughing."

Their hope: That just one person would send an email to the address printed on the flyers' pull tab.

They received dozens.

"Because it's so absurd, people felt the freedom to be absurd in their replies," said Graham.

"It's good clean fun. We're making people laugh," Mejia said. "The world could use that."

^{Meet the pranksters: Amelia Graham and Amanda Mejia. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]}

When neighbors shared the flyer on the very Facebook page that sparked the prank in the first place, the high jinks came full circle:

• "Inside jokes from the neighborhood Facebook page IRL. love this."

• "I really hope you created this e-mail address for real responses...That would be like taking this to master level."

• "Ohmigod this is the greatest ever."

And, perhaps the best:

"I have Pete. I am holding him for ransom. This is not a joke. I will start removing Pete's legs, one per day, until my demands are met."

The reaction was more than Graham and Mejia could have hoped for.

"Thanks for playing silly with us, which most adults don't do," Graham said.

The duo are now brainstorming ideas for a follow-up, prompted by neighbors who've asked, "Are you going to do more?"

"All these people are interacting," and there's an opportunity to harness that into real connections, said Graham.

She's spent more than two decades living on the same block of Monticello and over the years Graham said she's noticed one disturbing trend: more and more backyard fences. 

Where she used to be able to poke her head out the back door and see end to end up and down the block, now Graham and her immediate neighbors are the only houses with no barriers between them.

"People are living together, but they're not really living together," she said. "We say hello, but we don't have anything to bond over."

For an encore, Graham and Mejia are thinking about a scavenger hunt, perhaps one that ends with a barbecue.

"These are cool people who are participating," Graham said. "We would enjoy knowing them in real life."