To start this story off you will need to remember how #2 ended with a practical joke. This story is probably my best story about the practical joking that has gone on over the years. It has been told several times and using several venues.
In the early 80's the Pennsylvania crew (Bob Assetto and George Whitfield) were making annual visits. They were generally very successful at finding alterna. This year was not such a good year for them and toward the end of their trip were getting rather anxious about finding something. For several years herpers had been placing sticks, black rubber, banana peels with cheetos, and ropes on the cuts to look like snakes to see who they could fool. Some of you will remember the very famous "Grey Banded Kingstick". That stick got me so bad one nite that I actually thought I saw it moving in the crack causing me to panic and jump out of the jeep. I thought it was real all the way up to reaching for it. At any rate, everyone was trying to outdo the other and eventually rubber snakes painted like alterna started showing up. So naturally, me being the jokester that I imagine myself to be, tried to top them all. On this nite my son and I found a large dark phase blairs with exceptional orange that was very freshly run over and mooshed the front 1/3 of the snake pretty bad. We picked it up and took it out east of Langtry a couple of miles to one of the white tall cuts. There I placed it on a ledge about 3 feet from the bottom with the damaged part tucked into a hole. From the road with a spotlight it stuck out like a neon sign and looked very natural and crawling into a hole. I purposefully set this up in front of Bob and George, who by the way had another young guy with them riding in the back seat. My son and I then backtracked down the road and waited for them to come by and my plan was to be at the set-up point at the same time they got there. I could not have planned it any better, we arrived just as George slammed on the brakes and 2 spotlights were shining from their car directly on the snake. I heard Bob yell "blairs" and then all hell broke loose. Both Bob and the guy in the back seat flew out of the car. The young guy fell out of the door, roled around on the ground, lost his glasses, skinned his knees, and finally got up running to catch up with Bob. I heard Bob cursing as he pulled the snake out of the hole when he finally saw what was up. He came walking back to the car as my son and I were asking what they had found. He was mumbling under his breath and as he got closer I could make out "tthhaatt sshh--tt ain't right". At that point neither my son nor myself could restrain ourselves any longer and busted out in laughter. It had all just come to a head with his quote. The joke had gotten to a new level. I figured my son and I were really in for it and we were wondering how they would get back at us. I did not realize how bad it was going to be. A couple of nights later my son was spotting the short cut just east of Osman Canyon when I saw another car coming to us on the other side of the road. Not wanting to be the cause of blinding anyone I told him to turn off the light as the car pulled up even with us. It was George and he asked if we had seen anything. Well, immediately I thought we missed a "set up" because we had not seen anything. Just then there was a noise coming from the cut on our side. I looked and there was Bob, naked except for boots running across our headlights. I picked up my spotlight and shined it at him as he ran across the road. To this day I am unable to clear the vision I saw from my mind. All I could make out was the white of his A$$ bouncing in the light as he ran to the car across the road. I remember shouting "that sh-t ain't right, I have a 15 year old boy in the car who will be scared for life". Turns out we really did not experience the full effect of what Bob had intended. He was standing on the cut in full frontal spread eagle waiting for the spotlight to hit him but, thanks to herp courtesy my having my son turn out the light saved us some serious psychological damage. I am not sure but I truely believe that is the begining of the term "that sshh--tt ain't right". As that guy on the radio says "Now you know the rest of the story".
