Inspired by Jeff Kay, I conducted an experiment on my dogs today. I have a Roomba, one of those robotic floor sweepers that looks like a frisbee on wheels. When you turn it on, its electronic eye helps it navigate clumsily around the room while sweeping up debris. Mostly it gets caught on something not apparent to the naked eye and spins in circles until it finally emits a plaintive beep and quits, but the concept is that it cleans the floor. What can I say? I'm a sucker for gadgets. So what I did was, I put a piece of red bell pepper, which my dogs will normally fling themselves onto the ceiling for, on top of the Roomba (while it was turned off) and called one of my dogs into the room. He grabbed it and ran to his cave to eat it.
Next, I put another piece of bell pepper onto the Roomba and turned it on.
It turns out my dogs are (a), not very bright, and (b) not hungry enough to go near that freaky shit, no thank you motherfucker.
First of all, he didn't realize that the bell pepper was on the Roomba. To his little rat brain, the object at rest was not the same thing as the object in motion. The stationary object offered food. The moving, whirring object, that other one, was different, and ergo, not the one with food. I tried picking up the bell pepper, and leading them to the Roomba by holding the bell pepper just out of reach, but no dice. As soon as the food was on top of the Roomba, it ceased to exist. Dogs are so literal. Jeez.
Finally, I saw him make the connection that there was food on top of the spinning danger device. He crept toward it a couple of times, shooting me dirty looks all the while, but always backed out when the Roomba made one of its unpredictable turns and aimed right at him. He scampered away, went to his cave, and glowered at me, muttering under his breath. I'm pretty sure he said "cocksucker."
