It rolls up the side of the bowl a little bit, then wobbles back down.

Wow!

It kind of pets the ball, trying to discern things about the texture.

(Also it doesn't really think the ball is going to fly up for an additional bonk, but it wants to be very prepared for if it does, and is braced accordingly.)

The ball is slightly waxy-feeling, and the surface is uneven. On close inspection it's not perfectly circular and has an indent in one side and a little green thingamabob opposite it. The bowl also contains two yellow crescents and a weirdly shaped light green thing.

If it pokes all three types of object from the top, do they squish similarly?  Do any of them feel like the bonk?  What if it squishpokes harder?  Faster?  Both??

The orange object is very firm; the yellow one less so, and the green one retains a noticeable indent after the poking finger is removed. None of them are quite the same as the bonk. If it squishpokes harder and faster it can poke a hole all the way through the green one and get goo on its finger!

Now there is goo on its finger.  It's not really sure what to do about this.  . . . What if it pets the green thing with the goofinger.

Then there is a smear of goo on the outside, previously gooless skin of the green thing. The inside of it is whitish.

Hhhhmmmmmm.  Can it put goo from the green thing on the other objects?  What about the bowl?  What about the table and the walls?  Maybe it should do some additional squishpoking to get enough goo to find out.

It can smear goo all over the place!

The food that recently entered the house is staring through it at the antics of the goo-producing object.

Can goo go on the food.

Yes! Then the food screams - quite a lot - and the upstairs food comes hurtling down the stairs just in time for the smeared food to grab its hand and haul it out of the house.

Oh.  It wasn't even nibbling on them??   . . . Also it had forgotten that the original objective was to get the goo off its hand, and now instead there is more goo.  Smear smear smear smear.

Time to go back to looking for the specific ball that bonked it (which of course it has absolutely no way of discerning is not in the house).

It is now in an unoccupied house with the front door standing open, shifting slightly in the wind.

It does not find the specific beach ball that bonked it. It can find the fridge, the sink, the tablecloth, the bathroom, the living room sofa, the stair runner rug, the light fixtures, the trash can, a box of cake mix, a mop, a case of beer, clothes in the upstairs closets, some magazines, an umbrella, and a sewing machine.

Woah, the trash can has a lot of different kinds of stuff in it.  Maybe the ball's in there?

The trash contains:

- crushed beer cans
- carrot tops
- potato peelings
- glass shards
- dust, dirt, and hair
- used matches
- plastic wrap with various grime on it
- fish bones
- banana peels and accompanying fruit flies
- bits of cardboard and paper

It sorts these into piles by kind to make very sure that there's not a ball hiding somewhere in there and then floats over to poke at the light fixtures.

They make a noise when tapped! They're warm!

tap tap taptatap tap    tap taptap  tatap tatap tatap tttap

. . . . pressing a hand to it to feel the warmth more?

It continues being steadily warm. Kind of hot, actually, if a hand lingers on it.

But if it taptaps on it that's not hot?

It's only very briefly hot, which is like being less hot!

Enough like being less hot to be very intriguing and worth experimenting with for a good few minutes.  Taptap tap press press tap.  Confusion confusion.

It does several more laps around the house searching for the ball before it gives up and floats back outside.

The deflated ball remains with the bike where it's propped up against a hedge.

 - ball!!!

Very tentative careful poke.

It is smooth except where sand is still adhering to it.