We're Neighbors!

The chirping was one I knew well: a smoke detector needed a new battery somewhere in the house. I searched high and low in our house and found not one smoke detector to be chirping. The task was made more arduous due to the long intervals between chirps. Where could it be coming from? I questioned, as I looked up at the basement ceiling. I thought I had followed the noise, but to a dead end. I edged closer to the corner of the basement that touches the backyard. There it was! Was it outside? Impossible! Who installs a smoke detector on the outside of the house?

I went to bed. Not one night, but two, were harassed by the constant, muffled chirping.

Then the answer came to me on my way home from work.

I burst into the house certain of my mission, and seeing Elizabeth in the kitchen I asked, without so much as a greeting, "Is it still happening? The beeping sound?"

"Yes," she replied evenly. I didn't even take off my coat. I went back outside and knocked on the neighbor's door. I intended to speak kindly and frankly to the neighbors about their terribly loud smoke detectors and offer to help them change the batteries. They were clearly home: the dog was barking madly, some voice was quieting him, and a blue glow from a TV filled the front room. When no one came after five cold minutes, I stomped back through our house and to our backyard, separated from their backyard by only a thigh-high iron fence.

Sure enough, just as I had pictured, on their glass picnic table lay two smoke detectors, chirping on off rhythms, every one or two or three minutes. Who installs a smoke detector on the outside of the house? No one. But one might leave smoke detectors with old batteries outside if they were too annoying indoors, and one had no idea how to change the batteries.

I hopped the short fence and easily removed the first battery, laying it beside the shell. The second was not so easily arranged. It was a one-time-use machine. To stop its sounds, you have to destroy it by pushing a difficult notch of plastic down. I couldn't do it just then, and took the offending apparatus with me back across the fence. After several attempts, I took a hammer to it.

I thought, now isn't that funny looking? I ought to leave it on their front porch with a sign on it saying, "We're neighbors!" Then they'd see I only wanted to help and that I shared in their distaste for the persistent noise--what a laugh!

When I floated the idea to Elizabeth, she was horrified. "That sounds more than vaguely threatening." And we shared a laugh. But I was kinda serious.

My only regret is that I didn't go straight for the hammer.