Midnight Capers

It was 11:30 on a moonless night, and I’m in my PJs removing the lawn mower and the wheel barrel from the shed in the backyard so I can get to the 6-foot ladder hanging on the back wall. What do you do around midnight? SILVER LINING: it’s not raining! I pull the ladder out and lug it into the house, lifting it up enough so I’m not dragging it across the floor. I’m thinking “THE CONSPIRACY OF INANIMATE OBJECTS.” That is what this is.

We began to hear the chirping just as we were lying down for the night. “Squirrel in the attic?” I ask Val. She’s already reading, I’d just rolled in, and her silence tells me not likely. We wait ½ a minute or so, “Chirp.” I’m thinking cricket, finch, cicada….that’s it a cicada. I get a bit hilarical (hysterical and hilarious) when I’m really tired and try to be serious.  We wait…hope increases…seems like 45 seconds… “Chirp.”  The lobe in my brain that triggers my compulsive behavior is now fully functional.  I will not be reading in bed anytime soon. 

When you’re young you don’t mind burning the midnight oil on all manner of activities….right? I remember. But when you old and you’ve packed it in for the day, that last thing you really want to do is search for the source of Chirping…..but you know you will never fall asleep until the mystery is solved.

Sounds like it’s coming from the kitchen. Is that the sound the refrigerator makes when the door is left ajar….? my mind in focusing in on the hypothesis that the chirping’s source isn’t the throat of an insect, bird or mammal. It’s an inanimate object. As I leave the bedroom and Val props herself up, one more chirp. Yes, it isn’t going to stop on its own. I walk into the dining room and am greeted by the chirp. Damn, it’s overhead. The refer door would have been too simple. Fixed to our 10-foot ceiling is the smoke detector, its chirp telling me that the battery is low, and there is no way to know how long it would keep telling us. So, a man knows when he has to take action. And the SILVER LINING: There’s no smoke in the dining room or kitchen.

As I remember, all I have to do to disable the damn thing and stop the chirping is push the button on the detector’s housing. I’ve done this before, here or in one of the other eight houses we’ve lived it. I march back down the hall to get one of my favorite tools. No not the leaf-blower, the broom which is propped next to the clothes dryer. {I demonstrate holding the broom by the bristles, enabling me to poke the detector’s button with the tip of the broom handle.} The device chirps back indignantly three times. This doesn’t seem to be the response of an inanimate object. I wait to see if this caper is over for the night. 30 seconds later, it chirps in defiance. 

Further action is required. That’s when I realized I had to bring in the ladder to disconnect the device or replace the battery. Remember: 6-foot ladder, 10-foot ceiling, 76-year old man told not to climb ladders. SILVER LINING: 76-year old man will defy injunction not to climb ladders.  So, I don’t send Val up, but she is now standing by to call 911. The smoke detector is right above our pen for the puppy. So, we have to disassemble the folding wire panels. Val is snuggling the puppy. I realize that the pen is also an inanimate object. 

Then, I gingerly climb the ladder. 76-year old man can still read, so I obey the warning on the top step, DO NOT STEP ON THE TOP STEP. A ladder I realize is also an inanimate object. I am surrounded and outnumbered. I stretch as far as my aged body allows and even have the thought—I think this will be easy. I try to untwist the housing so I can take out the battery. But it won’t untwist. I do the same thing numerous times, expecting a different result. Yes, I remember, that is the definition of insanity. In a last desperate effort to open the housing I inadvertently pull the whole device out of the ceiling. SILVER LINING: The Smoke Detector is now disconnected from the wiring. That’s a good thing; that should stop the chirping. Val is pleased to watch me descend the ladder in triumph. As I hand the maimed contrivance to Val, it CHIRPS Right In Her Face several times out of pure insolence. I am stunned. It may have a life of its own. But it shouldn’t have done that!

Val gives the device a stone-cold look for disrespecting her. I have seen that glare in her eyes before and am glad she is not giving it to me. She hands the device back to me, but I am unable to unscrew the top. She is now fully engaged and has moved on from unscrewing the housing. She has her tool box opened and is ready to perform a tracheotomy. This Inanimate Object will soon be permanently muted. She uses the screwdriver to pry the housing open. It doesn’t give at all. “You try,” she says. I try but am afraid I will break the plastic cover.  She looks at me with a wicked smile of inspiration. She pulls out a small hammer. In my heart, I feel there is something not immoral, but just wrong about smashing the device to bits. We’re supposed to be smarter than the device, right?  “Let me try once more with the screwdriver.” I give one mighty torque and break the plastic cover. The SILVER LINING is that we haven’t maimed a turtle or cracked a crab for its flesh. I know it isn’t dead; it chirps again. It has become an immortal THING!

I see the battery. My god, it’s wired in! Then, I realize that I never installed this device. I tell it, “You don’t belong here!”…. It is chirping now every 10 seconds… calling out for help. It has a sense of its impending doom. Val is ready with the wire cutter. Chirp! After she cuts the wire, I reach in to pull the battery out, but it is glued to the connector bracket. It is chirping for dear life. “Screwdriver,” I bark as if I were a neurosurgeon performing a lobotomy. With one deft flair I pop the battery out of the bracket. We look at each other. Yet, we are expecting to hear continued chirping. 30 seconds, 60 seconds….thank God. SILVER LINING--We didn’t have to enact plan B. We were going to bury it alive behind the shed. 

The conspiracy is over. We are jubilant and don’t care about the hole in the ceiling, the wires dangling from it. We don’t care about leaving the ladder in the middle of the dining room. I can’t leave the corpse of the detector in the house and carry its remains out to the garbage pail, its final resting place.  And by now, why wouldn’t the microwave just decide to explode….But we have won. And the final SILVER LINING—this didn’t happen at 3 in the morning. 

As I lie down, I wonder, Will another smoke detector, of which there are three others in the house, begin whimpering? I slowly come to realize that I’m wound up too tightly like an old-fashioned alarm clock to go to sleep. There’s a chirping still echoing in my head. My God, I have become an animate object.