Anthropological Roots of Housesitting

It is an unspoken rule that when you ask someone to housesit for you, you are tacitly asking them to have sex on every surface of your home.

This ritual has existed for thousands of years back when “water my plants while I’m away” was more like “seed, plow, and harvest my crops after I’ve ascended to Norse heaven.” But more recently, I’ve been thinking about the source of that strong sexual urge one experiences while lodging in someone else’s abode. (NB: Not a sexual euphemism.)

I can only assume that this desire comes from ancient times when one caveman would ask another to keep watch over his cave while he was away hunting some sort of ferocious Snuffleupagus-like animal. While staying in the new cave, the caveman reasons that if he and his wife (or, as she was known at the time, “a seed storage caravan”) were to conceive a child at the new cave in addition to their own cave, the chance of all of their children being eaten by bears is dramatically reduced. (The leading cause of child-loss in this hypothetical scenario.) 

“Cognito ergo kuma sutra,” the caveman eloquently declares. And thus, the boning began. (Literal boning in this case, because bones were the principal tool of the time.)