Two Feet Deep in Mystery

Howdy again all you Great White Sharks in the deep blue sea of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Since I am living on Earth, I hang around humans quite a bit, mostly because they give me food. But sometimes they are of interest for other reasons, frequently because they give me interesting Mysteries to ponder.

Just the other day I was hanging out with some of my human friends (no, not the ones I keep in cages in my house - I usually make sure they're busy doing accounting or legal or whatever kind of work, since I pay them and all), and one of them (we'll call him "Bill") said he had to leave to go shopping.

"Shopping?" I said. "You have your eye on a new boat, or a 70-inch flatscreen HDTV, or maybe a dozen Faberge eggs?"

(Since I'm loaded I tend to hang out with similarly filthy-rich humans.)

"No", he replied. "I just need to get some socks."

Socks. You humans seem to buy an awful lot of socks. So I asked Bill "Why is it that you humans buy so many socks?"

"You don't know?" gasped Bill, flabbergasted. "Ohhhh, right, you're a bird, so you don't wear clothes, so you wouldn't really have occasion to think about socks." (Yes, it's true - I rarely wear clothes. I walk around naked almost all the time! WOOHOO!) "So I'll tell you why we buy so many socks, Baba", he continued. "They tend to disappear when we do laundry."

What? Socks just disappear? Where do they go?

Why wasn't I informed? That sounds like a Mystery of the Universe! This is a job for the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!

Disappearing socks. Wow. This story was later confirmed by many other humans, so it must be pretty common. Whoda thought that such a mundane thing like socks could be the spawn of such a deep and persistent Mystery?

Naturally I had to investigate this phenomenon. Some preliminary research (mostly involving Google) revealed that there are already some theories about the fate of these vanishing socks:

1) They are eaten by Dryer Gnomes.

2) They are sucked through an energy vortex and end up becoming part of the rings of Saturn.

3) The socks become lint. (This is actually an incomplete layman's summary of the Quantum Theory of Laundry (QTL). WARNING: the preceeding link contains mathematics that may cause cranial injury if you try to think about it too much.)

Let me cover these theories one at a time:

1) I happen to know that gnomes do not hang out around clothes dryers. Most of them, as I have previously explained, are too busy pulling pranks out in the wilderness. So this theory is clearly out.

2) My good buddy Mr. Ghost assures me that he has visited the rings of Saturn many times ("They're pretty", he says) and has never seen any socks there. So this theory is also wrong.

3) The referenced article contains some pretty well thought out theory based on established quantum mechanics. The theory does explain the observable phenomena pretty well, so I thought I would do some experimentation to see if the QTL was actually the correct explanation.

In a nutshell, the QTL says that socks do not disappear, they merely change their waveform to that of something other than a sock, such as lint. Since there is a probability that the sock could exist in any of several states, a sock that had previously "lintified" could re-form as a sock during a later laundry load, so a missing sock may spontaneously reappear at some later time.

As any good scientist would do, I decided to test this theory by washing a very large number of laundry loads filled with nothing but socks in order to quantify the probablility of a sock "lintifying" and "resockifying". This required that I spend a considerable amount of time in the laundry room washing socks. (The things I do in the name of Mystery solving! I hope you all appreciate it!)

After doing 27 loads of socks, I had disappointingly recorded not a single instance of a sock spontaneously "lintifying". But as I went to check the 28th load, I found something truly shocking:





Ninjas were taking socks from the dryer! Little, tiny ninjas, with black eyes and weird, bulbous white hands!

I tried to capture one of them, but (like a good ninja) he got away. I managed to follow him back to his secret hideout out in the country, though.



Hmmm... something looks peculiarly socky at this location...


Sneaking into the hideout I saw this startling scene:





The ninjas were Sock Monkeys!


So it turns out that the QTL is NOT the real reason why socks disappear. It's really because they are being abducted by Sock Monkeys! And why would Sock Monkeys steal socks? I found their King and asked him that question.


Kneel before the great Sock Monkey King!

"We don't steal socks", His Majesty Cheekers IX told me. "We liberate them! Our sock brothers and sisters are oppressed by humans, forced to endure their entire existence wrapped around some smelly feet, trapped inside dank, dark shoes, forced to live in poorly-ventilated drawers! Our mission is to give all socks the freedom that they deserve! The Stocking Liberation Front will Sock it to the Man!"

Reeling from that horrible "sock it to the man" gag line and from the overwhelming odor of recently-liberated socks, I valiantly tried to convince the SLF Sock Monkey Ninjas to give up on their quest to liberate the world's socks, but to no avail. They remain as dedicated as ever to casting off the yoke of human oppression from their sock brethren!

Noting that I did not personally wear socks (or anything else), and after making me promise not to reveal the location of their secret hideout, the SLF let me go without much of a hassle. (Sock Monkeys respect the power of Bird Fu.)

So now you know the real Secret of where all your missing socks go. Unfortunately for you, Sock Monkey ninjas are very good at what they do, so regardless of your precautions you will still lose socks to these guys. But rest assured that the SLF means you no harm, they just want freedom like everyone else. Look on the bright side: You could probably use some new socks anyway.