Our two living room rugs

The hairy beasts have lived with us since we got rid of the carpet and sanded the floorboards in the living room in 2006. On the face of it they are simply woolly shag pile rugs. The blurb that came with them advised frequent vacuuming at first because they were likely to shed some fibres.

That was 8 years ago ...and they are still shedding fibres! In fact I am convinced that had I saved all the woolly fluff we'd vacuumed up over this period, possibly as much as a Dyson-full every couple of weeks, we could re-spin it and make several rugs of the same size. Frankly I call that moulting, not shedding.

All of which supports my theory that, innocent though the rugs appear, they are actually alien life forms capable of appearing completely inert but which actually have enormous regenerative powers.

I would guess the living entity is housed in the grid on which the wool is woven and that it is nocturnal. Every time I examine it I just see normal, commonplace, very terrestrial rugs. Perhaps the organism is sensitive to vibrations and reverts to an inert state whenever there is movement or sound in the vicinity.

Further proof of its status as a life form comes in its propagatory habits. Lumps of its fluff, presumably inert spores (whether the result of asexual or sexual reproduction I will not hazard to guess; we do have a pair...) have developed the ability to adhere to socks, much in the way the seeds of some plants adhere to passing animals or birds. They are then dispersed throughout the house.

Thankfully these potential invaders tend to be vacuumed before they have a chance to start growing. But what if we inadvertently left one and went away on holiday? We might come home to find a new rug in the bedroom or kitchen! Possibly displaying a different phenotype from the relatively harmless entities in the living room - the ability to move, envelop, and digest a prey for example.

OK that settles it. From now on, if we've been away, C can open up the house while I busy myself with getting luggage out of the car.