Mysterious appearances & disappearances

We have a kitchen in our lab. It's very convenient for washing the coffee things and lunch dishes. The only shortcoming was that there was nothing to dry your hands on when you finished washing up. Sure, there were paper towels. But as good ecologists, we are morally obligated to use as few of those as possible. So that only left our pants. Well, I got tired of drying my hands on my jeans and went out and bought a dish towel for lab.

Perfection!

Until last week.

The lab towel has gone missing.

So sad!

I can't get over it. Every time I need to dry my hands, I instinctively move towards the towel, only to discover, over and over again, that it has vanished. The feelings of sadness and betrayal return undiminished. Usually I feel the need to accompany this with a whimpered, "no towel :(" (yes, the emoticon too), to make sure everyone knows that the towel is still missing and how I feel about it.

So Steph suggested that I write a note. Our kitchen is very note-happy these days. There's rather a proliferation of admonitions garishly scrawled in big red marker on paper towels. (Apparently that's an acceptable use for them.)

It started with the sink. Steph's pet peeve is people leaving dirty dishes in the sink, or, even, perpetual mountains of clean dishes in the dish rack. So when I returned from my conference on Monday, I was greeted with "Everyone wash their own dirty dishes". The timing of its appearance roughly coincides with Mike H's departure from the lab. He was the obvious scapegoat when he was around. It was easy to assume that any sink troubles were his fault, so Steph would just confront him in person. Now that he's gone, it's more uncertain. Whose dishes are they, exactly? Hence the need for the note...

So I wrote a note: "Where is our lovely, precious towel??", and pinned it up in the towel's place. My goal is to trigger remorse in the perpetrator. Now when I reach to dry my hands, I find the note. And since it's written on a paper towel, after all, I use that. I figure that will increase the pathos of the situation, speeding up those remorseful feelings and, hopefully, the return of the towel.

Apparently we each have our own special focus. For Steph it's the sink; for me, the towel; and for Joanne, as it turns out, the microwave. Not wanting to be left out, the microwave now has TWO notes of its own. "Please cover your food in the microwave" and "Nothing with eyes. Nothing with a face. Nothing that bleeds. Nothing that moves". Who knew, it's a vegetarian microwave! I worried that all these notes were causing a bit of a cry-wolf syndrome and diffusing attention from the real crisis. So I added another, just in case :D. "Don't let the proliferation of notes distract from the urgent issue: THE MISSING TOWEL!"

Of course, our methods aren't all so passive. We have also been conducting interviews and interrogations. So far we've turned up nothing but speculation and suspicion. Joanne was quick to point the finger at Mike W, the bossman. Her rationale, however, was hearsay. He's shifty and unreliable, the story goes, because he once took a mug of Mike H's. Hm. But he seemed genuinely dumbfounded when we asked him if he took the towel.

(Incidentally, he loves all of this intrigue that goes on in the lab. He thinks that the resulting silliness and laughter indicate what a fun, cool lab we are. So perhaps he did do it, just to stimulate camaraderie?)

So far, the only sustained suspect is Mike H, plausible merely because it's implausible. Sure, one might point out that he couldn't have taken the towel, since he isn't around any more. But that makes for too perfect of an alibi, and since he isn't around, he can't satisfactorily respond to our accusations. So our suspicion remains. And the circumstantial evidence is very suspicious. It was discovered missing right after an emissary of his came to pick up a nalgene he'd left behind. Hm. Could he also have taken the towel? Could we be haunted by Mike H? Is he returning to taunt us from the Great Beyond (grad school)??

This all reminds me of the chocolate carrot incident.

Shortly before I bought the lab towel, I went to the Landscape Ecology conference in Utah. When I returned, there was a chocolate carrot on my desk. It was the week after Easter. Who gave me the chocolate carrot?? Everybody denies knowledge of it. The mystery remains unresolved. First Mike W seemed the likeliest suspect. There had been some bandying around between us minions as to who was the favorite. Everyone thought that I was the favorite since his family took me out for ice cream one day. (It was kind of strange.) If he's going to give a chocolate carrot to someone, it would probably be to his favorite, right? And he responded very suspiciously to interrogations. He pointed out that the carrot was from the United States, that it didn't have any French labels, that therefore it couldn't be from him, and directed suspicion to my fellow American Mike F. But he was far too quick to point this out. How did he know it was an American carrot when he'd supposedly only just seen it?

And it seemed very unlikely that it was from Mike F. As he himself points out, why would he share chocolate?? We let the mystery simmer down after a few weeks, since no one seemed willing to step up and admit to anything, but it remained in our minds. A month or so later, Mike F very pointedly asked me if I'd ever figured it out, right in front of Antoine. Antoine also denies knowledge of the incident, and I believe he's being honest. We'd only just met the day before I left for Utah and barely spoke at all. And even if he did already have a crush on me, it seems a bit early to start strewing mysterious chocolate carrots about...

So there you have it. The lab mysteries of the past 6 months. Maybe the mysterious carrot giver and towel thief are one and the same? Maybe it's a he-that-giveth-taketh-away kind of deal? Who knows.

Do you have any information on the matter?

Where were you on August 11? The week of April 13th?