Primal Surge

The chirps started a little after 2 am. They were spaced about 15 seconds apart.  I recognized it as the sound that smoke alarms emit when batteries need replacing. The chirps were coming from the living room but it was hard to pinpoint as the sound seamed muffled.  As much as I wanted to go back to sleep, I found myself waiting every 15 seconds for the next chirp, hoping it would stop of its own accord. 

When I got to the living room Ingrid was pointing to a round plastic smoke alarm 12 feet up the side of one wall slightly above a built-in cabinet that extended 3 feet out from the wall.  I first tried standing on a chair but when failing to even reach the top of the cabinet, it became clear that it would require retrieving a ladder from the garage.  Keeping this a short story prevents me from including a description of the current state of our garage.  After 15 minutes and a rather punishing experience, I positioned the 5-foot-high ladder at the base of the cabinet and climbed up to see if I could reach the smoke alarm.

Standing on the top rung of the ladder in my underwear and stretching out one arm to the wall at the back of the cabinet, I could just barely get a hand on the alarm.  Balancing on the ladder was tricky, especially while fully extended to get a grip on the alarm.  Without my reading glasses, I could not see how the alarm was mounted on the wall, so I tried every way I could think of to remove it - twisting to the right, twisting to the left, pulling up, pulling down as well as pulling out.  It never budged.

I have mellowed a great deal with age.  I avoid physical exertion altogether and rarely if ever, get worked up emotionally.  This is the result of a conscious effort on my part over the years to remove myself as far as possible from the uncivilized behavior that characterized my youth.  However, on this evening, several factors began to take a toll.  It was nearing 4 am, extracting the ladder from the garage combined with the awkward teetering on tip toes on the narrow top rung had me drenched in sweat onto which a thick coat of dust had been added from the cabinet's inaccessible top, and the frustration of being unable to remove the alarm unleashed a long dormant reckless strain. 

As startled as I was by the ear-splitting CRACK produced by viciously wrenching the alarm off the wall, I was even more surprised to hear the chirps continue from somewhere else in the living room.  In hindsight, I've developed the following theory to explain how it was that I managed to attack a perfectly innocent device.  Ingrid became a serious quilter not long after we moved into the house 24 years ago.  The living room over the years, although somewhat cramped, had gradually morphed into a true artisan's workshop containing countless fabric bolts and sample swatches; sewing machines; an extensive collection of tools; specialized equipment, lights, furniture and racks required to design, layout, fabricate and store finished quilts.  The totality of which was dense enough to mask the location from where the chirps were coming from.  It had been either a refinance of our home loan or a change to our home owners insurance, perhaps a decade ago, that had prompted the installation of the smoke alarms that we have in the house.  I had long forgotten where any of them were placed, but once Ingrid had pointed out the one above the cabinet tunnel vision took over, obscuring any consideration of misdirected sound.

Clearing away the quilts and various paraphernalia that surrounded the device emitting the chirps was an effort similar to removing the ladder from the garage.  The device was plugged into an outlet 11 feet directly below the one I had ripped from its mooring but it was a completely different shape and design.  

I unplugged it and looked it over trying to figure out what it was but without glasses couldn't read any of the wording on it.  I had a vague recollection of having to install something to do with carbon monoxide when the smoke alarms went in and concluded that it must have something to do with that.  I also looked for a way to turn off the chirping but this proved futile; nor could I manage to open it in the hopes of finding a way to stop the chirps.

 

I made my way to the backyard thinking the absence of carbon monoxide in the outside air would cause the chirping to cease.  The sun hadn't yet come up but there was enough light for me to open a trash bin and wedge the device snugly between 2 bulging trash bags at the bottom of the bin.  I closed the lid to the bin and walked to the back door.  Before going inside, I paused and waited.  I listened to 2 or 3 chirps, thoroughly enjoying that my work had reduced each chirp to a barely audible "twerp".

 Later the following afternoon, I took some trash from the kitchen out to the bins.  As soon as I opened the back door, I could hear the chirping which had grown quite loud and the 15 second interval between chirps had been cut down to barely a pause.  The chirps were now issued in a rapidly repeating pattern.  Lifting the lid on the bin. I reached in and brought out the device.  As I held it, the chirps increased in volume and then blended together to become a continual piercing shriek.

When we moved to this house, I vowed to never again have to do yard work of any kind.  Rather than replace myself with a gardener to take care of the back yard (who might take a vacation, fall ill or even pass away), I wisely arranged for the tree, shrubs, lawn and the dirt itself to be replaced with wall-to-wall paving stones.  Consequently, as I stood next to the trash bin with a hand-held air raid siren fully engaged, it was rather unexpected to find a shovel leaning against the wall since direct access to the earth via our backyard had not been effectively blocked off for the last 23 years.

 On those rare occasions when the necessary pieces somehow manage to fall into place, I am a believer in not questioning things.  I bent down, placed the screaming device onto the surface of the paving stones, raised the shovel high above my head, and for the second time in less than 24 hours, gleefully called upon my inner savage.