Where There Is a Smoke Alarm, There is Battery Replacement

The Chirping, of course, begins around 2 AM.  My head, commanded by strings connected to some unknown force, lifts from the pillow. I mumble, “Didja hear that?”  Polley murmurs, “Can I hear a gasoline truck exploding in a dynamite factory? What am I?  Deaf?  Yeah, what is that?”  The fog of dreams slowly evaporates from our brains.  We are not fully conscious.

“Sounds like a bird got in.”  I sit up and remember that, while barbequing, I left the screen door open for about five seconds.  Some bird must have spent most of her adult life just waiting for that moment to sneak inside our home.  Why any critter would make that choice was beyond rhyme or reason, but my brain was still extracting itself from some nether world and Parkinson’s brains can take some time in restoring full awareness.  Besides, for almost forty years I taught Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, and I was pondering “weak and weary.”  It must be some big bird like Rodan because the Chirping was hurting my ears.

Polley sat up.  “It’s the smoke alarm.”

Right.  It was the smoke alarm. I admit to being a little disappointed.  My hunting skills would not be needed. I got out of bed and stood beneath the antique white plastic oval screwed into the ceiling at the top of our stairs.  I looked up and waited.  In a few seconds, “Chirp!!!”  I looked down the stairs.  No smoke.  Besides, the smoke alarm was chirping and not wailing like a modern ambulance siren.  I yelled to Polley, “It needs a battery!”

I went back into the bedroom and initiated a conference with Polley.  We could go downstairs, choose a kitchen chair, bring it upstairs, position it below the smoke alarm, stand on the chair, open the cover and replace the battery—-providing we had a nine volt battery.  Standing on a chair perched over the stairs and performing any activity while my body and brain was mostly in dreamland did not seem to be a wise option. OR, we could put up with the Chirping and wait until the morrow.

We went back to bed and fell into a Chirp filled sleep….mostly.  The next day we placed a chair at the top of the stairs. I gingerly stood on it, looked down the stairs and considered the possibility of a bouncing death to the bottom. I reached up, unlatched the casing of the smoke alarm, and, with some difficulty, and with the chair vibrating from my efforts, pulled out the battery.  Polley handed me another battery. I inserted it, carefully stepped off the chair, and expressed relief. We replaced the chair downstairs and sat down to our morning coffee.  “Chirp!!!”  We looked at each other.   Polley shrugged her shoulders. “The replacement battery must be old.”

Some explanation of battery accruement is in order here.  It started when our kids were small, and Santa’s gifts required a rather large investment in batteries of all shapes and voltages.  Then came our own electronic devices which demanded an assortment of AAA’s and AA’s.  When a device is not working properly, my first troubleshooting strategy is to replace the battery. When this tactic did not solve the problem, I saved the batteries I replaced, figuring they were still good.  In short, we have an accumulation of energy providers in various states of health.  Polley volunteered to go to the store and buy a brand new battery.

Thirty minutes later, the chair was back at the top of the stairs, I on top of the chair which creaked and wobbled as I once again removed the battery, inserted the spanking brand new one, returned the chair and sat down once again to our second cup of coffee.

“Chirp!!!”   Can’t be!

Polley suggested the only possible answer—the smoke alarm had protected us for some time, maybe decades, and had given up the ghost.  Another trip to the store.

We were getting pretty skilled at positioning the chair at the top of the stairs, and I even began to stare a potential fall down them in the face.  Yes, I began to scoff at danger.  Removing the old smoke alarm took a few decades to accomplish.  Reaching up to unscrew the old smoke alarm from its anchored screws is difficult under any circumstances, but the Parkinson’s handy man has to struggle with a hand shakily trying to insert the screwdriver in the screw slot.  It is like watching a lie detector’s needles producing a graph when a notorious liar is giving testimony. The needles zig and zag wildly. Likewise, the screwdriver is all over the place. It takes my total concentration, staring and reaching up over my head to place the tip of the screwdriver in the screw slot.   I remove the battery from the old smoke alarm, am prepared to screw in the new smoke alarm when “Chirp!!!”  Can’t be.  Then Polley notices that the Carbon Monoxide Alarm anchored to the wall on the stairs may be responsible for our plastic noisy “aviary.”

Oh.

We replace the battery in that alarm.  No more Chirping.  Polley has the exceptionally bright idea of installing the new smoke alarm just above the Carbon Monoxide Alarm for easier access.  Of course, this means drilling and anchoring new holes in the wallboard for Parkinson’s Handy Man.  Hours go by, but it is done.  No more chair at the top of the stairs.  I have come to terms with the irony that I risked life and limb several times in order to install a device to keep us safe.