My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts
Day 91: The mystery of the missing socks
Have you ever done a load of laundry and ended up with an uneven number of socks? Of course, you have, everyone has. Experts have even made a study of it and came up with the following explanation:
Practically speaking, the study found the most common causes for missing socks were falling behind radiators or under furniture, pairs getting separated in different washes, socks falling off a washing line or simply forgetting to put them in the wash in the first place.
I have experienced that problem too, not once but several times. I know that I have 24 pairs of white socks, but the last time I counted I only had 21 pairs.
In an attempt to find them, my first port of call was the laundry basket. I tipped them upside down, sifted through them, but found no socks. I looked under my bed, looked behind cabinets, checked the bathroom, even the walk-in closet, but no socks could be found. It was, to say the very least, very strange. One sock going missing is already mysterious, but 6 socks!
And then one night the mystery got solved, just like that. I came home and changed my socks because they were slightly damp from walking in the snow. I left the damp socks on the floor to dry and went to the kitchen to make coffee.
When I came back into the living room I nearly dropped my cup in surprise. There was Halley with my sock in her mouth!
(Excuse the bad quality of the pictures. They were snapped in a rush.)
“And what are you doing?” I asked her.
She looked at me, eyes big with surprise. Before I could say another word or make a move, she turned tail, trotted into Dieter’s bedroom and slipped under the bed.
We couldn’t stop laughing. It was the funniest sight … Halley running off, dragging the sock between her paws. When I tried to take it away from her, she held on for dear life. Okay then, she could keep the sock for a while.
It was great entertainment anyway. Eventually, Halley came back into the living room with the sock, played with it for a while, dragged it to the kitchen, ran with it to the bedroom, all the while providing us with laugh out loud laughter.
After a while she showed up without the sock, so she obviously had deposited it somewhere. Since I had seen her slip under Dieter’s bed I wanted to retrieve my sock from there, but I was in for a bit of a surprise … I found not one but six socks. The little thief!
And while we’re on the subject of hiding things, it’s only fair to say that Halley also finds things.
The other day, we heard her batting something around in Dieter’s room. When he went to check he found her playing with a screw. A day later she was playing with a ring. Now it’s become a bit of a joke, when we hear her playing with something Dieter says, “Now what has she found?”
So far, she’s dug out a Christmas ball, a hair clip, a pen, a lipstick, and a subway token, all items that were forgotten. She even found a long-lost piece of paper.
Weeks ago, Dieter had written down a schematic for something he wanted to print and for some reason that piece of paper had gone missing. He’d searched for it, but it was gone. He assumed that he accidentally threw it away.
Then a few days ago we saw Halley reaching for something under the love seat. By the looks of it, she couldn’t quite get what she was reaching for, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Persistent little thing as she is, she eventually got what she was digging for … Dieter’s piece of paper.
Now as it turns out, Halley can not only hide and retrieve things, she can also count. If you don’t believe me get a load of this.
This morning she was playing with a soft yellow ball. The ball rolled under a bookcase and since she couldn’t reach under it I got the ball for her. While on my hands and knees (closely watched by Halley who also peered under the bookcase), I did not only find the yellow ball, but also a blue ball, a green ball and red one.
I retrieved the yellow ball and gave it to her. She looked at the ball, looked at me and waited. I retrieved the blue ball and placed it next to the yellow one.
“Do you want the others too?” I asked her. She just sat there, waiting. So, I first got the green one and finally the red one. And would you believe it, as soon as I placed the last ball in front of her paws she started batting one of the balls around. The little bugger knew that there were four balls under that cabinet and waited until she had all of them back.
Now if that’s not impressive I don’t know what is.
