It’s pink, it only goes out after dark and, most suspicious of all, it came from Cleveland.
But this is no monster movie scenario. Instead, “Flamingo Surprise” is a business intended to shock the daylights out of bleary-eyed homeowners. The gimmick: To celebrate a birthday, anniversary or some other special occasion, by planting 50 pink plastic flamingos on the front lawn of some unsuspecting recipient.
Explains Rick Fazio, who runs the Chicago operation. “When the `victim’ looks out their window at 6 in the morning and sees all these flamingos grazing in their front yard, it’s a real eye-opener.”
The unorthodox greetings business was started in Cleveland three years ago by Fazio and his twin brother, Ralph, who decided to open a Chicago area branch in Bensenville last February. Fazio’s operatives-mostly college students and semi-retired corporate types-stage late-night installations on about 250 lawns per month. The flamingos and a 4-by-3-foot sign are planted between midnight and dawn, and retrieved by 6 p.m.
Says Fazio: “Occasionally, we’ll make a mistake and put the flamingos on the wrong lawn. So you get two phone calls on your answering machine in the morning. One of the messages is: `Get this stuff off my lawn,’ and the other is the customer saying: `You flamingo-ed the wrong yard!”‘
Fazio has lately augmented his menagerie with sheep, Holstein cows, fish, frogs, pigs and penguins. Upcoming, of course, are dinosaurs.
Installations cost between $50 and $65. Call 708-350-1280.