The Mysterious Sock

When we lived in the mountains near Foresthill every few months we would find a single sock in the front woods, but only one, never two. We'd find an argyle sock, an athletes sock, a wool sock, a cotton sock, a white sock, a black sock, a brown sock. Once we even found a bright orange sock. We tried to figure out how one sock was getting into our front woods but could never determine the reason.

At first we thought perhaps someone was camping in the woods and lost a sock. Then we thought a homeless person was walking by and dropped the sock. Later we thought some kids might be playing a joke on us and had thrown the sock out of their window. We examined the socks and they were always clean socks, not new, but clean, never dirty. And none of the socks belonged to us, not a single one. But we discounted all the reasons we could think of how the sock had arrived in the woods, because we found a single sock every few months over a period of almost nine years.

At first we saved the socks in a drawer thinking we might find the match to the single sock or we might need them for some reason. After a few years we had gathered quite a collection of single socks and decided to just toss the socks. After all none of the socks matched so we couldn't use them.

The week we moved I happened to walk up to the neighbors house across the street and up the hill to say good bye. When I got up the neighbor's house I saw my neighbor, Mac, was in the garage taking the laundry out of the dryer. I noticed my dog Blue had followed me up to Mac's house. As we were talking, Mac was folding clothes out of the dryer. A sock dropped out of the dryer and my dog Blue ran up to the dryer and quickly grabbed the sock and ran down the driveway with the sock.

I called and called Blue to come back, but she wouldn't listen. I was flabbergasted since Blue would always come back when I called and always listened to me. I told Mac about finding all the single socks in our yard over the years and never knowing how they got there or who they belonged to. Mac turned to me and said, "Blue is a really great dog, she listens to whatever I say. She'll fetch a ball and bring it back, but I've never been able to get her to bring back a sock".


The reason for the mysterious sock was finally solved after so many years. Above is a photo of Blue as a pup. If you'd like to read more about our dog Blue, please follow this link.