This just isn't normal!

This just isn't normal

It was 2 in the morning and I was awake. I didn't know why. I went back to sleep. At 3am I was awake again trying to figure our why I was dreaming about a beeping sound. I heard nothing. Back to sleep. By 4am I had figured it out. One of the six smoke alarms in our house was having battery issues. No clue which one. Comfortable that I knew what the problem was, I went back to sleep.

At six in the morning there was a new noise. I hadn't heard any beeps for a couple of hours but something was pounding on our sliding glass door downstairs. It was a wayward bird that must have been confused by the reflection.

It was a school and work day so the house was in full swing by 7am. The beeping had stopped and the bird was gone. By mid-morning, however, the bird had returned. His "attacks" had moved from the slide glass door in the back of the house to the window on the side of the house and later to the front of the house.

Seeing visions of the old Birds movie, Eve officially freaked. She taped tin foil to the windows and patrolled the house with a loaded broom in hand. She called me to help solve the problem. Being the loving, caring and understanding husband that I am I responded to her pleas for help with a question; "Have you figured out which smoke alarm is failing yet?" No, she hadn't heard a beep all day.

I came home helped tape more foil to more windows and checked all the smoke alarms. I pressed the "test" button and they all beeped. Where was the button to press to see if they were running out juice? I suppose I could have changed all the batteries, but I ended up changing none of them. Now I started to wonder if I had actually heard a beeping at all.

Night two played out similar to night one. This time the beeping started about 6am. I moved out to the hall waiting for the next beep. I began the very slow process of eliminating smoke alarms. I hadn't noticed that Eve wasn't upstairs. She was up before me defending the house from the attacking, anything but wayward, bird!

I figured out which smoke alarm was failing and replaced the battery. The bird hasn't been back since. Could it be that the smoke alarm and the bird were related? Is a smoke alarm capable of sending a mating call to the neighborhood birds? We're leaving the foil up on the windows just in case.

April 17, 2008