Chirping and belly laughs

The culprit on a hill of discards.

Y’all I have a funny, true story. So Sunday we heard the dreaded chirp from our smoke detector in our bedroom. My husband Ed proceeded to get the ladder and replacement battery. He climbed up on the ladder and viola just like that...the chirping continued. We researched why it could possibly still be chirping and ended up determining that we needed a replacement smoke detector so off to Home Depot he went. After going to dinner at my daughters house, he changed it out turned the electricity back on and....the chirping continued. After reading more google articles and watching YouTube videos, we learned we really needed to change out ALL the batteries from ALL 7 of the hardwired smoke alarms so we did, retested the offensive chirping detector and....the chirping continued. It’s late by this time and we decide to just sleep in the guest room and tackle it again in the morning. So first world problems y’all a while back, we upgraded to a king bed from a queen and sleeping in the guest room with us and a 25 lb Jack Russell was very uncomfortable after sleeping in a king so in the middle of the night Ed transferred himself and the dog to the couch right next to the room with the offending chirping. Needless to say none of us got a good nights sleep.

So morning comes we are all dragging I go out to the garage to work out and notice the discarded smoke detector’s factory date is 10/23/2006 well Mr. Google said you should switch them out every 10 years. We’ve been in this house for 5 so these are the originals. So we figure this is the issue. So off to Home Depot Ed goes to buy 6 more replacement smoke detectors. He comes back, electricity is shut off and the replacement begins. One by one they are changed thinking surly one of these replacements with stop the chirping because Mr. Google said they were interconnected and are only as good as it’s weakest link. Well none of them stop the chirping. We are beyond perplexed. There is discussion of getting an electrician in to check the wiring that only a day ago was fine. Y’all we are sleep deprived, chirp shocked and now we are thinking we need to replay the night before so Ed decides to just cut the power, remove all the detectors and we will get someone to look at them tomorrow. It’s close to 4 o’clock. So back up the ladder, thinking again one of these that are removed will be the culprit and we will identify the chirp offender but with ALL of them removed and the electricity off, the 🤬chirping did not stop.

When I tell you this sent my husband in a tailspin it was bad. He went to muttering under his breath and his brilliant engineering mind could not figure out what was happening. We went back to Mr. Google and read about maybe the smoke detectors were on different parts of the breaker even though ours was labeled “smokies” we decided to cut the power to the bedroom where the offensive chirping was coming from. Around this time Ed got a phone call and mentioned his day long activities and the caller mentioned checking the carbon monoxide detector. One thing I failed to mention is when we would stand in the room listening for the chirping it sounded like it was a traveling sound. I at one time stood away from it by our dresser under a vent and swore I heard it over there. Finally Ed ask where the carbon monoxide detector? At this point we will try anything. Back story we bought a replacement carbon monoxide detector a year ago but never installed it so it was sitting on the dresser. He goes over picks it up off the dresser and walks under the smoke detector and we hear chirping. Surly it can’t be. So he walks into the laundry room far from the bedroom and there is chirping. We both look at each other and are in disbelief. Ed changed the battery in the carbon monoxide detector and just like that chirping gone. We immediately break into this uncontrollable laughing. This chirping, this traveling sound, this sleep depriver, this maddening sound was the result of a unused co detector that needed a new battery. Sitting on a dresser needing to be screwed into the wall. As we ate dinner in silence, a giggle would escape one of us and the belly laughing would start all over again.

There is a lesson in here somewhere. If nothing else Ed’s Fitbit showed he did 17 flights of stairs and we as a couple have not laughed that hard together in years. And best of all we have all new smoke detectors for another 10 years.