Thursday, November 5, 2009

Beeps in the night

At 2:15 this morning, our upstairs smoke alarm began to beep the intermittent beep that means “low battery.” A low battery seemed unlikely, as we had just changed our batteries when we (or rather the nation) switched to Standard Time.

I got up, got up on a chair, and looked at the alarm. I’m not sure what I expected to see. But the alarm stopped beeping. I took a look around the house, had a drink of water, and went back to bed. It was then that the beep recommenced. I got up, got up on a chair, pulled out the battery, and went back to bed. The alarm beeped one more time. I have a corroborating witness.

This morning, we found the almost certain cause of the beeps: a ladybug, walking in circles around a ceiling light fixture a few inches from the smoke alarm. Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. My house is not on fire.

comments: 2

Daughter Number Three said...

There's probably a website somewhere dedicated to stories of smoke detectors beeping in the night, particularly ones whose batteries are not dying.

Oh wait, perhaps this is it.

Michael Leddy said...

!

I can’t decide if it’s reassuring or scary that someone else’s detector also beeped minus batteries.