Gremlin tales

I have a gremlin living in my house. He's sneaky. He'll hide out for years, so we think he's gone, but every now and then, something happens, and I KNOW he's here.

Remember my missing pink crochet hook? It's still missing. As far as I can tell, it is nowhere. There were maybe 3 minutes from the time I last saw it to the time I started frantically looking for it, and I didn't get up from where I was sitting at that time. We've looked everywhere. I've torn the couch apart multiple times (interesting what I DID find in it), and dug my hands into all the cracks and crevices. DH and I even tipped the couch back to take a look underneath, to no avail. The kids cleaned up the room. DH has even now (not because of the crochet hook, but he has) taken a bunch of moving boxes out of the room down to the basement. It just isn't there. Nor have we been able to find it anywhere else (the computer room, DD's bedroom, nowhere).

Have you ever had something go missing that absolutely cannot be missing? Let me tell you a couple of tales of my gremlin's earlier exploits (he's been with me at least since college).

During my sophomore year of college, I had a Biology class. Towards the end of the year, there was a huge test, and I needed desperately to study for it. My book suddenly was nowhere to be found. Luckily, my fiancee (my DH now) had a roommate that had the same class, and he let me borrow his book to study. I stayed up late into the night studying for the test, both in the kitchen and in my bedroom in my apartment. I finally got too sleepy to study and went to sleep in my bed. I woke up early the next morning, and studied more in my bed, and then finally went to go take the test. I returned the book to the roommate, and went to take a nap (I'd been up way, WAY too late). I laid down in my bed, and there was my book... UNDER THE PILLOW. Now, I'd slept in that bed, and I'm sure you know college biology books are huge. There is no way I would have missed it having slept and studied on the bed as I had. My roommates said they hadn't taken it, and I have no reason to doubt them. None of them were taking the class, and they weren't so capricious or malicious to have taken it when I needed it to study for a test.

Later, after DH and I were married and living in married student housing, I had received a pell grant check for something like $800 or $900. I set it on our table... I knew exactly where it was. Other things piled up on the table, too (I have horizontal surface sydrome... all the horizontal surfaces in my house end up covered with stuff), but I never moved the check, and neither did my hubby. I finally got around to wanting to cash the check and I searched all over the table for it... first where I KNEW it was, and later through ALL the piles of papers. I did this repeatedly, and could not find the check. I don't remember how long later (a week or a few), I was looking through the papers on the table for something else (or... maybe I was even cleaning up... what a novel idea that would've been at the time), and lo and behold... there was the check. EXACTLY where I had placed it, and therefore EXACTLY where I'd been searching for it. There's no way I would've missed it before, and yet it wasn't there... but then it was.

ARGH! So now the little beasty has my pink crochet hook. Any guesses where it will turn up?