Is that you, Don Knotts?

Just to reassure any readers who might be wondering, yes it does get, um, creative (silly) around our dinner table sometimes. A couple of recent cases in point...

A week ago or so, somehow we got on the subject of Australia. Ayers Rock eventually got mentioned, and our youngest daughter had read about it. Something was said about it being the biggest rock in the world. That reminded me of something I read in a book recently, so I asked, "Do you know what the biggest living thing is?"

My son answered, "That fungus". So he had heard about that. There's a hillside in Oregon which has this fungus growing on it. Apparently they tested the DNA at several places and it's all the same fungus...connected by tendrils or filaments underground. It covers acres and acres and according to science is thought to be at least 2,000 years old.

My son said "If it's that old, you think it would have learned to talk by now". I replied, "It's probably such a low frequency that we can't hear it".

He paused a bit, then seemingly out of the blue:

"Well, if we could hear it, it'd probably sound like Don Knotts."

Inspired, I tell you. Where did that come from?

Then tonight...

Somehow we got on the subject of how Hannibal crossed the Alps on elephants. How many elephants?

"Twenty-one", according to my youngest daughter. That sounds like a pretty good guess to me. Hannibal probably couldn't get his hands on all that many elephants at once, so maybe the rest of his army was on horseback or on foot. The discussion turned to elephants in general. Their big ears? A natural radiator, according to my wife.

I added that elephants can communicate over distances of miles, using sound frequencies too low for most people to hear. One group of elephants can hear the other group call, from way out of sight. My son picked up on that...

"Hey! Is that a K-Mart up there?"
"No, but we've got a Wal-Mart."

Heh. Much more of this, and we'll be ready for Fake Trivia Night.