I got a call this morning and jumped up out of bed to answer it. As I ran into the living room to answer it, I heard a little "chirp" or two. The smoke/carbon monoxide alarm was going off. It was with a sigh that I picked the fone up (I hope that they did not hear me do that). Why was I sighing and why was I so sleepy this morning? Well, it all began last night as bedtime approached. We heard the infamous low battery "chirp" of the smoke alarm. It was to my ears, a bit muffled and seemed to me to come from next to my right ear. Not possible because there was only a curtain there and the window. The smoke alarms hang in three places in other rooms. A couple were close-ish, but still....in another room. My bride thought that it sounded close to her. Tch! It was bedtime--I didn't have time for this. Yeah, but it was a smoke -slash- carbon monoxide alarm, so one can't just ignore it. Aside from the danger, there was the perspective of listening to the chirp all night long. No thank you. Nothing else for it but to check it out..........but which alarm WAS it. There are three alarms and only two of us. Hmmmmmmm. I took the one in the foyer and the bride took one of the ones in the LR. So there we stood, heads cocked-back...looking at the ceiling, at the respective alarms. Nothing. Two minutes...four minutes...five minutes....six minutes.................. The bride was half way undressed, so I told her to just go on and finish and I would stand by one of the alarms and when the alarm did go off again, at least we could rule one of them out. She completed the preparations for bed and still no chirp My neck was beginning to ache a bit from looking up constantly--A watched pot never boils, y'know. Finally she was back on the scene and we were talking-out a plan...CHIRP! Wat?, huh?, hey...which one was it? Good grief! We were no wiser. Well then, the decision was to remove and replace the battery in the alarm that my bride was pretty likely to be the culprit. I had no idea, so that was as good a choice as any....the time ticks on....getting later and later. She replaced the battery and we put away the little step-up. We watched the news and more time went by...no chirp. I went and did my thing--teeth and jammies. No chirp. I came back to her and we talked about it and decided that we had made the right choice; and just as we were about to give each other a high five......CHIRP! We sunk down into our chairs, heads hanging, shoulders drooping. Time keeps passing. Right then--we were tired and sleepy, so we decided to just replace the batteries in the other two alarms, then we would have all the bases covered. We took the step-up back out and did that little chore. By the time that this was done it had been about forty minutes...the time was still ticking. --It waits for no man, don't cha know. She trundled-off to bed and I got a bowl of yoghurt and waited, not entirely trusting the alarms although I could not see how they could possible chirp again. Whew...yoghurt finished and no chirps. I could perceive the sandy dark figure in the shadows was beckoning. My eyes were little splits by then and I was yawning regularly--you know the kind--the ones where you make a little rasping noise in the back of your throat and tears come to the eyes a bit. Lights out, doors locked, I peeled the covers back and eased into the bed. I lay there eyes still open and listening to the storm raging outside....listening.....I closed my eyes to check the lids for pinholes.....and I was gone. At some point in the night.....a muffled "chirp" in the distance. I wasn't fully awake so I thought I would check it in the morning. I drifted off again. I do not know if it was five minutes or three hours, but...."chirp". I heard it again. Then again....then a series of chirps like Morse Code. That's it then! I got up and headed out to the kitchen for a drink of water....No chirps. I went around and looked at the alarms for some sign of malfunction. Nothing. I went back to bed and heard another chirp. I pulled the sheep over my head and tried to go back to sleep. I did sleep--I drifted in and out. The mysterious chirp was slowly making me angry. I did fall back to sleep at one point and then.... The fone rang! We both piled out of bed...I went for the fone and my bride went into the kitchen to set the tea. While she was getting things ready on the tea tray, CHIRP. The bloody microwave went off! When it had been used last for defrosting supper veg . The veg was taken out mid-cycle and so it was actually still on and asking us to finish the cycle or turn it off. This revelation also explains why I thought that I had originally heard the chirp coming from the window. The chirp went out the kitchen window and came in the window next to me. Lord have mercy.
Microwaves were invented to make our lives easier . Remember that the next time you spend all night listening to chirps. It won't help, but it may keep you from chucking the microwave out the window! Take a nap, and all will be better. By the way, I like the way your wife handled the problem. I usually leave difficulties in my husband's capable hands. That way if he can't take care of it, I can blame him!
Been there, done that, only in our case it was the washing machine. Every bl!"£!"£ machine bleeps these days. Microwave, breadmaker, washing machine. And can you turn them off? Can you heck! And why is it that the Smoke alarm always tells us it needs a new battery at 3 am?
My wife has just reminded me of an incident from a few years back. Each night just after we had gone to bed there was a faint 'ticking' noise/ This was in the days before smoke/carbon monoxide/bleeping machines. We searched the bedroom and found nothing. During the day it was silent, but as soon as the room was dark, the ticking began again. Now I have lived in a house with silver fish behind the wallpaper and you can hear them, but it is not really a 'ticking' noise. As soon as we turned on the light to look, the noise stopped. Mice? Not likely. Eventually, by the light of the moon and with careful listening I traced the noise to the wardrobe. Next morning when I moved it away from the wall a moth flew out. It had been flapping its wings when it was dark and tapping on the back of the wardrobe.
Oh dear me Sjoerd, that sounds like a very busy night. I can't help laughing, though. Our smoke alarms always start chirping in the middle of the night. I'm a heavy sleeper, but my husband isn't.
Heh,heh,heh...MARLING--microwaves...yeah, they are handy things to have. Too bad they can't cut themselves off. hahaha. When we replaced all the batteries, we really thought that the problem had to be solved. What do you mean the way my wife handled the problem??? Hurmphf. I see you have similar experiences, PALU--I know about the electronica and their pings, peeps and chirps...that goes for computer, tablets and smartfones as well doesn't it. I always have to sigh when I get a new aparatus. The choices for tones--they are endless. Annnnd everything is set to give a sound when it happens. I just turn them all out and put the things on vibration or nothing at all. Anyway...the smoke alarm batteries--over the years it really does seem like they have gone off in the middle of the night. Uncanny, that. What a great story about the moth in the closet. You know I'll bet that we could make a thread on "Night Noises" here. Who doesn't have a story. I have another one. We were in a small backpackers hotel Pokhara in Nepal. We had a great little room on the second floor with a Queen of the Night bush right outside the window. There was clean mountain air and the rooms faced the internal courtyard...all the elements for a good night's sleep one would think. However when we settled down to sleep and all was still, we could hear gnawing. It was loud enough to keep us awake. I must have looked over that tiny room a hundred times. Outside the windows, pressed my ear against the walls, checked the baseboards for mouse holes. I could find nothing. After two nights I spoke to the owner and told him that we would require a different room. He asked why and we told him. He developed an angry face and said that he knew what the problem was. He went with us up to the room and we sat there in silence. Finally we heard the gnawing sound again. He went to the bed and said that they were in there. He was angry because he had been assured that the wood was grub free, so he paid a premium price for infected wood. It was the grub(s) of a stag-horn beetle or something like it.The gnawing sounded so loud because the grubs were in the headboard as well as the legs. He removed the bed and brought us a new frame. He later showed us a couple of the grubs that he had removed from the bed. Their size was shocking.
I have laid awake many nights trying to figure out which smoke alarm was chirping. My dog is terrified of the smoke alarms,be it a low battery chirp or a full on alarm and so I have to figure out which one it is or NO ONE gets sleep! Why is it the batteries always decide they need replacing in the middle of the night??
DROO--I can laugh about it now too. NETTY--This experience is one that forced us to take a different action. Although it was not the smoke alarm batteries as we thought orininally, it brought home the awareness that with multiple alarms the batteries go off at different times of the year. To remedy that a bit we have decided that when a weak battery alarm goes off, we will just change them all now. We can have that cost. The council does the same with street lights after all.
