I was putting my acoustic guitar back on its stand the other day and I thought I heard a mysterious faint whispering sound from it. Upon giving it a gentle shake I could just about hear something , if not exactly rattling then shifting about lightly inside of it. A bit of judicious upside-down shaking produced a sizeable and remarkably compact featherweight ball of fluff.
Convinced I had discovered a rare and undiscovered phenomenon, I rushed to the Internets to establish the precedence of my discovery only to find out that, of course, nothing is new on the Interwebz and that it was a yawningly well-known occurrence….and that they were called “Tone Balls” ( which to my mind sounds like a venereal disease*) and that not only were they well known but that some geek actually collected the things.
This event (if one can dignify the discovery as an event) also had me looking up how household “dust bunnies” form (not that I…ahem…have ever experienced such things in my own household, they are more like dust “sheep”) and it was …er…quite interesting.
*upon mentioning this to my good friend the Sage of Withington, he inquired if this ailment was is any way analogous to another well known affliction known as “Boxcar Willie”