On 20 Jun 2006 08:54:08 GMT, Anthony Campbell <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>On 2006-06-20, Mark Hickey <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Ted Bennett <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Can someone tell me where my 9mm wrench got to?
>>>
>>>I just set it down, and now it has apparently vanished into some
>>>alternate reality. My garage isn't THAT messy, is it?
>>
>> According to George Carlin, it went to the Hozone. That's where all
>> your missing socks end up, but you get it all back when you go to
>> heaven. So not to worry...
>
>Years ago I was making a wooden cabinet for a loudspeaker, in an almost
>empty room with no carpet. I was alone in the house. I put a wrench down
>on the floor behind me; when I turned to pick it up a few minutes later
>it wasn't there.
>
>There was no conceivable place it could have gone to. We lived in the
>house for about 2 years after that and it never did turn up. This
>happened in Ireland so I assume it was taken away by the fairies.
>
>Anthony
Dear Anthony and Ted,
Missing wrenches, bah!
I once lost a fourteen-pound snapping turtle, two feet long from nose
to tip of dragon-tail, for ten minutes in a sparsely furnished
four-room, locked-door, linoleum-floor, no-pets efficiency apartment.
See third picture from the top. The head is the size of a fist.
http://www.chelydra.org/common_alligator_snapping_turtle.html
I set him and his colleague out to wander about my third-floor
university apartment while I drained and cleaned their tub.
I had no trouble finding his friend, who was contemplating the oven in
the kitchen nook--his natural mottled brown camouflage was intended
for streams and ponds, so he failed to blend in with white linoleum.
But my other snapper was nowhere to be found.
He was obviously not in the bathroom where I'd been working.
Nor was he in the kitchen nook. I looked in the spaces between the
wall and the refrigerator and the oven. I even looked inside the oven,
which was silly.
I looked in the living room, under the arm chair, the card table, and
the sofa that unfolded into a bed. I unfolded the sofa-bed, but my
turtle had not crept into its complicated innards.
I checked the small closet.
I opened the door to the unused bedroom, where I stored a few things.
No, the turtle hadn't pushed the door open and then accidentally
pushed it shut.
I looked in the large rubber tub, wondering if he could have climbed
back into it while I was looking for him. It was two feet high and
almost four feet wide, the liner from an industrial clothes washer.
But a careful count revealed only one turtle in the tub.
Then I looked again at the rubber tub with his friend in it, thinking
that I might have been absent-minded enough to set the tub down on top
of him and fill it while he was trapped under it.
No, there was no suspicious bulge in the floor of the rubber tub.
I was beginning to get worried. Small-minded people in the English
department might make snide comments about someone who could lose an
animated brown rock the size of a bowling ball in an efficiency
apartment.
I gave the security chain on the apartment door a casual glance. Yes,
it was still in place.
Very calmly and carefully, I searched the apartment again, staring at
every square foot of linoleum, looking under every piece of furniture,
examining every nook and cranny.
I even opened the refrigerator, since no one was watching me.
No snapping turtle.
Finally, I admitted defeat after bending over to look under the arm
chair. As I straightened up, there was the turtle, looking me right in
the eye.
No, not in the arm chair.
He was on top of the card table, behind my typewriter and a pile of
books, having climbed up onto the seat of the arm chair and then from
the arm rest to the card table, and thence to a comfortable spot
behind the typewriter, from where he could gaze out the window.
It was spring, when snappers feel an urge to head toward the open sky,
which often indicates a nearby pond. Luckily, the window was closed,
so he had been forced to settle for admiring the view instead of
testing his flying ability from the third floor.
Being a dumb brute, he had no idea what his owner was doing, wandering
around the apartment, staring at the floor and muttering strange
words. (Or if he did, he never said anything.)
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
