Dr. Theresa Solves a Mystery

For three or four days a noise in my little home office here has been driving me crazy, Poe-style: tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap... almost too quiet to hear. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Finally I called in Dr. Theresa to investigate. She asked for silence and sat in the center of the room. Then, almost immediately, she started laughing. "I think it's that frog on a toilet," she said. Yes, faithful readers, she was referring to that gift presented so ceremoniously to us by Ace Atkins: a novelty frog on a pink toilet, which harnesses the mighty solar power of our life-giving sun to bob its head in a humorous fashion. The thing is, the frog has never worked before. And those three or four days over which it kept going tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap... were gray and overcast! With nary a beam of sunlight to start it a-bobbing. Dr. Theresa cannot solve that part of the mystery. No one can. There it was, beating its little plastic head against the side of my printer. Tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap...