Why Do Humans Have Ears?

This morning I was eating the tasty walnut/cinnamon popovers Dean made for breakfast, reading the paper and contemplating the sourdough baguettes and cherry scones* I was planning to bake after breakfast. As I was eating, reading and contemplating, I thought I heard a banging sound from somewhere in the house. I stopped chewing, listened more closely and heard it again, “Bang! Bang!” “What’s that sound?” I asked Dean. “What sound?”

The sound got louder and more frequent. “Bang! Bang! Bang!”  Dean added more jam to his popover and continued working on the crossword.  About the time I decided he was even more deaf than Shadow I threw down my popover and jumped up from the table determined to find out where the sound was coming from.

I started walking around the house trying to pinpoint the sound. The banging was coming from the basement. It sounded like a washing machine being thrown against the dryer during the spin cycle when the load is uneven. “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” But I wasn’t washing clothes. As I ran down the stairs I worried the furnace was on the verge of exploding and thought how lucky we were that it had warmed up and we weren’t still suffering through last weekend’s sub-zero temperatures. At the bottom of the stairs I turned left toward the sound and saw four legs, a butt, a tail waving joyously back and forth and a headless black body in the hallway.  Shadow had pushed her head completely through the kitty “door” and was somehow making that banging noise.  I yelled, “Shadow! What do you think you’re doing?!” The banging stopped, she pulled her head out, looked at me, and slunk up the stairs to Dean, who I can only assume by that time had moved on to another popover.

Normally the kitty food looks like this:

I went into the laundry room to assess the damage and discovered she had somehow managed to remove the lid from the tin of kitty food, latched onto it with her teeth, drug it over to the opening in the door and had been tenaciously trying to pull that tin through the small opening meant only for kitties. I’m sure the only reason she was trying to get the tin through the opening was because the level of the food was too low and her tongue was too short.

In the interest of full disclosure I had to recreate the dog head in the kitty “door” photo and Shadow was not interested in cooperating. During the actual event, her head was pushed through the hole all the way to her doggy shoulders.

Dean is sure Shadow will be totally confused now because she was in the doghouse and then we coaxed her to do the very thing that put her in the there. She's in the doghouse alright, but I think she was confused well before we recreated that photo.  Think about it. She stuck her head in a small hole in a door, held on to a metal tin with her teeth and banged it into a door – over and over and over and over – like she has had some kind of psychological condition.  Now she's just confused about why her ears are ringing and her head hurts.

*Best ever Scone Recipe from my daughter, Leslie

Heat oven to 375 degrees

1 large egg

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter

2/3 cup fruit

Line cookie sheet with parchment paper
Whisk egg with cream, buttermilk and vanilla
Place flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in food processor and mix.  (or use your hands if you're like me and don't have one).
Put flour mixture in a large bowl, add liquid to a well in the center and stir.
Add fruit

Form into a 8 or 9-inch round, cut into wedges.  Brush with a mixture of 1 egg and 1 tablespoon cream and sprinkle with sugar.

Place wedges on cookie sheet

and bake 15 minutes.



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Why Do Humans Have Ears?