The Grand Opening is Now Closed

We have a mini-mystery here in the old homestead.

Technically, it's a middle-aged homestead, built the year before The Pony was born. Every now and then, some odd antics occur without explanation. The most recent incident was last Sunday.

I called The Pony to my dark basement lair, my office, located at the front corner of the basement. The Pony lounges on the couch at the other end, watching the big-screen TV and fiddling about on his laptop. I wanted him to put my baggie of knee ice back in the mini-fridge under the stairs. He does this for me on a regular basis. Once a day. But Sunday evening, something was different.

"Okay. Now THAT'S creepy."

"What do you mean?" The Pony had crossed three steps from my office doorway to my desk to grab the knee ice. Or as he proclaimed it, knee water. Ice melts, you see. When he took those three steps back to the doorway, he made that "creepy" proclamation.

"That door was not open when I came in here." The Pony was not talking about my office door. It's only a portal. No hinges. No door. I wanted it that way. "It was closed, and now it's open."

"What are you talking about?"

"The bottom door on that gun cabinet by the refrigerator. It's standing open. Again. It was open earlier when I came downstairs. I noticed when Dad asked me to bring him up a soda. I closed it. Now it's open again. That's not right."

The gun case holds two long guns of a type which I do not know. I'm not a gun enthusiast. It's a wooden case, with a glass door that opens to take out the guns. Hick says those are his "show" guns. The ones he's okay with somebody taking if they break in, rather than look for the "good" guns. He's a bit of a collector. I've only known him to go target-practicing a number of times less than I can count on my fingers. Thumbs excluded. The gun case is against the front basement wall, under the stairs, across from the mini-fridge. It has two small wooden doors at the bottom. Inside is a pair of winter gloves. That's it.

The small doors were what The Pony was talking about. I would logically infer that he must have bumped the door while getting a soda or knee ice out of the mini-fridge. Except that the cabinet door was open BEFORE he got the soda. And AFTER he came directly from couch to office to grab the knee ice and put it back a couple hours after he got it out. It's a short cut, you see, to pass under the stairs, between mini-fridge and gun cabinet. A short cut The Pony takes multiple times per day, coming to my office when summoned, or going to and from the NASCAR bathroom next to me.

In all the years of homestead living, this is the first time that cabinet has let a door hang open. The Pony has been fetching items from the mini-fridge, and cutting through that gap, hundreds of times. I can't explain it. But The Pony is spooked. Wednesday night, we were looking for a lost item. One we thought The Pony had misplaced. Or put down somewhere and forgotten.. "I'd go look in that cabinet, but I don't want to. It's dark over there."

I'm not sure what to make of it. Since last Sunday, the cabinet has remained closed.