Outdoors - The cloak of invisibility

   Nature has a way of making some things invisible. In most cases, there is good reason for this. In the fall and early winter before the snow falls, deer become almost invisible to protect them from predators. As I sit at my office window, I can watch deer on the hill on the far side of the lake. If they stop moving and I glance away, it is as if they disappear. Their winter coats blend in perfectly with the brown grass. My wife and I like to drive around Lake Wapello, giving Billie, the poodle, an outing. He enjoys hanging his head out of the window and barking at deer and squirrels. When his favorite quarry is spotted, he erupts with barking that will deafen a person if his head were not outside of the vehicle. As we drive slowly through the park, even deer standing near the road will be almost invisible. Billie, who has better eyesight than my wife or me, has been known to miss deer that are standing perfectly still. For the sake of our hearing, there are times we just drive on by and not tell him about the deer he missed.

   Some things become invisible for which I can find no good reason. Things that fall into this category are TV remotes and telephones. An example of this is the cordless phone for the garage. It sits on its charger on a table and is quite handy when a person gets a call, and it is not convenient to go inside to answer it. One day, it suddenly became invisible. It is not as though it is camouflage colored or has legs to crawl off and hide. It simply disappeared. I considered the possibility I carried it into the house while talking on it and laid it down in some random place when I got done. Unlike me, my wife is one of those tidy people that believes everything has a proper place in this world and should be there. If there was an extra telephone in the house, she would know about it. I thought about perhaps while working on some project, when I completed a call, I simply laid the phone down rather than putting it back on its charger. This is a real possibility, as I am not nearly as organized as some people and enjoy a bit of clutter. There is a limit to my clutter though. I straightened up the garage and shop area, and there is no phone. There is a remote chance, I put it in the pocket of a coat or jacket I was wearing at the time of its disappearance. I checked every jacket, sweatshirt, and pair of coveralls I own. It was not to be found.

   I can understand why animals need to blend into their surrounding but not telephones. I mean it no harm, but for some reason, it has been covered with a cloak of invisibility. The phone is somewhere around here, I just cannot see it.