Detector Detective

It's that time of year again.  Snow is falling, noses are runny, hair is static filled, cars are caked with salt, and skies are gloomy.  And if your house is anything like mine, smoke detectors are beeping.  Yep, I admit, I did not heed the age old time-change rule of changing out the smoke detector batteries and now I'm paying for it.

The beeping started last week.  "I'll change the batteries tomorrow," I'd say to myself.  A week of tomorrows came and went.  Finally I could take the beeping chorus no longer.  So, armed with a chair and AA and 9V batteries, I went on a hunt to find the offending chirper.

About halfway into my mission of trying to figure out the offender, I realized that I should probably just go ahead and change the batteries in all the detectors. 

But there was one non-compliant detector.  I changed the batteries, performed the test by pressing the "test" button, and screwed it back on the ceiling.  No less than 30 seconds later the darn thing was beeping again.  "Huh," I thought.  "Must be old batteries.  I wonder how long these batteries sat on the store shelf."  So, I put 3 more "new" batteries in.  Same thing; beeping continued.  I decided to try a different strategy.  "Maybe the batteries in the top row near the front are older than the ones in the bottom row near the back," I reasoned.  After all, the batteries in the back must have been put in the pack AFTER the front ones, right?  Silly logic, I know.

Try three: My logic worked!  The beeping stopped.  But wait!  There was yet another one chirping somewhere else in the house.  Was it coming from upstairs or downstairs?  Which end of the house was it coming from?

I set out on my hunt, dutifully changing out all of the batteries.  The detectors mocked me, however, as I kept hearing a chirp.  If I was downstairs, the chirping appeared to be coming from upstairs, and vice versa.  If I was in the kitchen, the noise seemed to come from the spare room, and vice versa.  I felt like a maniac running around the house saying, "Aha, I got you now!" only to discover that the noise was coming from somewhere else.

Yesterday I was at my wit's end.  There HAD to be a detector I had missed.  And there was!  Somehow I had neglected to find the one in the laundry room.  Surely that had to be the one that was still chirping.  Nope.

I have yet to discover which one is still making that horrid noise.  Heck, maybe they're all in on it.  Maybe they are trying to drive me nuts.  Maybe they are making me paranoid...

Tonight I plan on trying a new tactic: take them all down and place them next to me on the bedroom floor.  Maybe I can determine which one is the bad one.  Either that or the house will burn down because all the detectors are in one room. 

So, think about me tonight as you are snuggled up in your bed.  I'll be armed with batteries and caffeine just waiting for one of those detectors to slip up and beep.  Muhahahaha!