Product: Cell Phone: Countermeasure
evil cell phone mocking bird   (+19, -1)  [vote for, against]
confuse and cause chaos

The cell phone mocking bird is a tiny speaker/synth/microphone/computer chip/motion detector unit that can be placed in the bag or on the clothes of your target.

Using Evil Technology(tm) it listens and imitates the sound of their cell phone or beeper.

Then it rings at random intervals. If they get too close to finding it the unit it stops right away. Much searching and shuffling will result-- and confusion at the off/non ringing REAL cell phone.

After the 10th time doing this it starts snickering at the person in a mocking fashion just after it rings a few times.
-- futurebird, Feb 24 2002

Birdcalls and Cellphones. http://www.cellmann...ews/researchers.htm
[Guncrazy, Feb 24 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

The Australian Lyre Bird http://www.webrevie...2001/06_22_01.shtml
"If a Lyre Bird can learn to imitate the click and whir of a camera, the buzz of a chain saw, the roar of a motorcycle, and the ring of a cell phone, it can certainly learn some of the simpler Internet protocols." [hippo, Feb 26 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Hehe.
-- bristolz, Feb 24 2002


mm, I think the Evil Technology (tm) has legs. What else can it do?
-- notripe, Feb 24 2002


Isn't this baked already with real birds? I remember reading an article that said that mockingbirds are starting to incorporate the trills of cell phones and beepers into their songs. And parrots and macaws have been doing this sort of thing for ages.
-- Guncrazy, Feb 24 2002


My psittacine makes a noise which I'm pretty sure is an imitation of the noise that a lot of car alarms make when you turn them on/off with a keyfob.
-- wiml, Feb 24 2002


good thing I don't have a mobile...
-- RobertKidney, Feb 24 2002


I love this. Unfourtunately, Knowing yuppies, it'll become the fashion to have a randomly ringing phone, and to have your bag snicker at you (whilst sitting in your swishg car drinking some travesty performed on coffee beans and soy products, whilst driving to your hip up-market multimedia upgraded new-age designed fancy shmancy job. But still, one for you.
-- QuadAlpha, Feb 25 2002


Mephista: there's plenty of ways to harass people that are still legal. Admittedly, do anything too often and you'll be accused of stalking, but within those parameters (i.e. if you don't get caught), try hiring cheap and out-of-work actors to follow them to bus stops or railway stations and engage them in conversations about gravel.

Or change your name to their name and go to all the places they go. Or sprinkle sugar on their doorstep. Or put fake personal messages professing your love for them in as many newspapers as you can find. Or sell a range of t-shirts depicting their face in various silly poses. Or drive really slowly in front of their car, scrupulously observing all traffic regulations. Or project an image of them on the toilet onto a sail suspended high in the earth's ionosphere.

Or send them hundreds of postcards depicting gruesome Renaissance paintings of the martyrdom of saints. Or walk behind them muttering, and stop every time they turn round.

Or train your cat to shit in their mailbox. Since everyone knows you can't train cats to do anything, you're sure to get away with it.
-- pottedstu, Feb 26 2002


I have heard a mockingbird in a Florida park do a flawless car alarm.
-- bungston, Mar 31 2003


well, it wouldn't make much of a difference for my family, because we rarely find the phone before it hangs up or goes to voicemail...but i love anything evil, so +
-- igirl, Apr 01 2003


I've heard mockingbirds do beeping alarm clocks as well. I'd love to have a mockingbird car alarm.
-- normzone, Jun 20 2006



random, halfbakery