Early this morning I was rudely awakened by a "beep". I thought at first it was Eric home and setting his car alarm. Then I heard it again, and looked towards the window and the alarm clock--it was only 5 am, he wasn't off for at least another hour, and there was no car in the drive other than mine... I put it down to the neighbors and rolled over... Only to hear it go off yet again, and Midnight, Eric's elderly dog, jumped up onto the bed with me all worked up! I turned on the light and got up (and get the dog off my bed), to realize that the smoke detector was "beeping" at regular intervals. The beeping in turn woke up Leina, the black lab, who started barking loudly outside my door. I came downstairs to be sure everything was kosher--nothing smoking or out of whack, and I called Eric to see what I needed to do to turn the dang thing off! In the meantime, being in the kitchen signalled Leina that she needed to go outside, so I tied her out on the leash while I waited for Eric to call me back. When he called he was of the opinion that the battery was probably low, and should maybe be removed. Cliff got up with all the noise (the rest of the kids apparently slept through it!), and he pushed the test button on the smoke detector down by the bottom of the stairs, setting it off... Midnight was scared and practically glued himself to my leg as I walked around. After talking to Eric, I let Leina back in and headed back to bed, reassured that nothing was smoking or smoldering in the house. Whatever Cliff had done testing the one at the foot of the stairs reset the one in the bedroom and the red light was no longer blinking at me, so I went back to bed...
It reminds me of the time my African Grey Parrot, Edward, learned to mimic the smoke detector in my old house. We had to have one at the top and bottom of each stairwell for daycare, and unfortunately the one was almost immediately on top of the stove! Anything fried set it off, and the parrot learned to mimic this sound, which I learned for the first time at 2 am one morning as I awoke to the sound of the smoke detector going off. Wearing glasses things are always blurry for me when I open my eyes and I remember stumbling through the house sniffing for what might be burning and finding absolutely nothing. Once tucked back into bed though, it went off again, so up I got and walked the house a second time. Got back into bed, and sure enough, it went off a third time! As I got up though I realized that it "went off" and was followed by a whistle.... Stupid bird thought it was a great game to get me moving! I"m not sure what broke him of doing it after a few more late night scares, but he eventually extinguished it from his repetoire of sounds/words. Maybe it was me stopping doing daycare, and hence we removed that one to another spot...
Ironically, we have had no further beeping of the smoke detector since early this morning, and I have been listening for it...
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