They absolutely looked just like this…

It’s poetic that on Halloween I feel like a zombie. I actually fell asleep at a reasonable time last night and was sleeping fine until all hell broke loose.  At 4:10ish there was a noise so loud my heart hasn’t stopped racing since.  It sounded like an air raid siren and I had no idea where it was or what it was for.  I jumped out of bed trying to figure it out – is this a tsunami warning?  Are we under nuclear attack?  Seriously, I had no idea.  I ran downstairs and outside and then realized it was coming from my house.  Holy crap – I don’t have any functional smoke detectors (I know, I should, but I do have 2 broken smoke detectors that I at various times knocked off the wall because they were losing batteries or I was cooking fajitas).  I finally found it, twelve feet high on my second floor, a smoke detector that I did not install and had no idea existed.  Who in the blue hell would put a smoke detector twelve feet high?  At this point the noise was still going, I heard the kid next door crying, and I was starting to panic, feeling my moral superiority on my horrible neighbors slipping through my fingers.

My 5’2” frame plus a three step ladder plus a broom didn’t get me anywhere the thing, so finally I called the fire department.  For some weird reason they don’t pick up the phone at 4:20 a.m. so I was actually forced to apologetically call 911.  The very nice operator told me they would be right out and just then the noise stopped.  So I said “oh, it stopped, maybe they don’t have to come” and she said “Well, it’s probably a carbon monoxide detector so they’ll come anyway”.  Well I had not even thought about that but for sure I was seconds from death.  Anyway, 8 minutes later four fireman with bedhead and a very tall ladder arrived to save my life.

Stupid story short, it was a smoke detector, it’s apparently hard wired into the wall but it was dusty and that set it off.  They were actually very nice and did not say a word about abusing taxpayer dollars, so that was sweet.  One of them climbed the ladder, took off the cover and blew off the dust.  As they left he told me to call an electrician if it happens again.  I sure hope electricians pick up at 4 a.m.

I await retaliation.

Happy Halloween!