"Rat Vision" - The Toy Cloak

A pile of toys (above) that have been sitting for a week.
They are currently cloaked and will not be disturbed
by the boys until I move to put them away.

I was once watching a documentary about rats. Apparently, rats won't touch anything that has been put out after dark. Not food, not anything. It's like it doesn't exist, they can't even see it. So if you want to catch rats, you have to make sure you put the trap out before dark. It's called Rat Vision.

My kids have a form of rat vision and it has to do with their toys. If a toy sits for longer than twenty four hours in any one place, no matter where it is, it becomes invisible to the kid. They don't see it. They'll step over it, step around it, all the time unconsciously avoiding it. If you were to ask them where they toy was, they wouldn't know. They would be powerless to find the toy because it has disappeared to another kid dimension. A cloak of invisibility shrouds the toy. A virtual toy cloak exists around toys on the floor.

Now, being a parent, I of course see the toys and grow more furious. I ask the kids to clean up their toys. With all honesty and candor, they try to pick up the toys but they don't see them. They can't pick them up because they don't exist in their minds anymore. They'll say, "Look Dad, my room is clean" and I'll be looking at a room full of toys all over the floor. It's amazing.

The only way to remove the cloak is to move the toys. Even a slight move brings them back into vision. A toy will sit on the floor for a week, I'll move it to a shelf, and my son will pull it back down immediately. "Oh, there it is," he'll say further infuriating me. The rats can now see the cheese. Especially if I 'clean-up' an area and put the toys in a neat configuration on the shelf, they become new and fresh and ripe for the rug.

I spoke with my wife about this and apparently I have the same cloak around all the crud in my garage (but that's another post)...