That GD Bird

John was thrashing around in bed at 5am and I was also awake. ‘What’s the matter?’I asked him and he said, ‘that goddamn bird!’
I cracked up and said I didn’t think I’d ever hear those two words come together out of his mouth. ‘It’s LOUD’ he whined. I had ear plugs in as I always do at night, but admitted that it was loud and wondered what kind of bird it could be with such a boring call. Eventually we both fell asleep again.

When we woke up again, and John opened the bedroom door to the hall to go and feed Spike, the noise was still going, only louder. ‘That’s not a bird’, I said. ‘It’s a smoke alarm’!

But we just installed ones with 10year batteries a couple of years ago, so why was it going off? John fetched a ladder and was fumbling around for a tool, but I didn’t think he should need a tool to turn off a chirping smoke alarm. He was certain that it was something installed by the heat pump people and was determined that he needed into the attic to disable it. I was equally certain that he shouldn’t go into the attic looking for he knew not what nor how to disable it.

By this time, Spike was growling because he doesn’t like ladders.

The compromise was to call the heat pump people and have them come look. Meanwhile, whatever it is is going off at regular intervals with five evenly spaced blasts (not very bird like in point of fact) and I have resumed my earplugs. Call made, John was fiddling around with the ladder again when he suddenly said, ‘I found it’. And indeed he had, because the loud bird had finally shut up and the heat pump guy was called off.

This is exactly why we installed alarms with ten year batteries. So much for that plan….

As for the picture…well, you already know that story. This is just a different version of it.