Home Alone

            When my husband goes out of town on business trips, without fail, weird things happen at home. This time, the dogs spent the early hours of the night barking viciously upstairs while I was trying to get some quilting done downstairs. They take their jobs seriously when John leaves telling them to protect me and guard the house. At midnight I decided to go to bed. The dogs settled down for the night.

            At 3:30 in the morning, I felt someone breathing heavily on my face and looking at me. T-Bone, our Labrador/German Shepherd mixed dog was sitting beside the bed staring intently at me through the darkness. His little buddy, Suzy the dachshund was with him, but since she’s short, she wasn’t breathing on me. She just kept shaking her head to get her tags to jingle.

I’d like to say that my dogs are like Lassie, trying to warn me of an earthquake or other impending danger, but the last time T-Bone did this, it was because my cell phone was beeping as the battery went dead.

Before I could switch the light on, I heard a little chirp. That meant it wasn’t my cell phone dying. It was a smoke detector, one of seven in the house, or the carbon monoxide detector. Great! Why don’t these things die in the daytime? Why is it always between two and three in the morning when the batteries start to fizzle out? I stumbled around in the dark, fumbling for lights. T-Bone pranced and smiled proudly following me.

            Another chirp, ok, the culprit was downstairs. The dogs followed me down, acting like this was the most exciting thing they’d ever done, maybe a milk bone would be forthcoming. I stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for another chirp. Chirp!

It wasn’t the carbon monoxide detector. Of course not, that was plugged into an electrical socket and easily accessible. It was the smoke detector up on the ceiling. I pulled a chair up under it, climbed onto the chair and reached up. I couldn’t reach it. I’m sure John would’ve been able to.

            I looked around and spotted a bar stool.  I clambered up on top of it, noting that it probably wasn’t the safest plan. I’d left the cushion on the 9” circle where you normally sit.  I was sleepy, and now I was wrestling with the smoke detector over my head. I warned myself not to be startled when it chirped again in my hands. As I twisted and turned, losing circulation in my arms up over my head, struggling to get the cover off, it dawned on me that if I fell, my husband wouldn’t be home to find me until dinnertime. It occurred to me that the “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” commercial didn’t seem so stupid now.

            I was getting impatient. Lefty loosie! Why wouldn’t this stubborn thing come off??? And then it did. But not the way the manufacturer intended. The whole thing came off; plastic anchors, ceiling plaster and all. Then it chirped again, cheerful to be free. I got off the precarious stool, not gracefully, but successfully. I pried the dead batteries out and left the whole mess, guts and all, on my sewing table.

            The dogs were satisfied that they’d saved me from the mysterious chirping, almost like when Helen Keller’s dog saved her from a fire in her house. I read an extra chapter in my book trying to get back to sleep. My husband will get to try out the new drill that he got for Christmas. It’s a win-win-win situation.      

Laura Keolanui Stark still appreciates smoke detectors, even though . . . She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com