CHIRP! CHiRP! Chirp! What is THAT Chirping?

Yesterday, I'm sitting at my desk working on a church lesson.
You have to understand that from 5:30 am until about 3 pm, my house is silent......as in S.I.L.E.N.T.
There is no TV on.
There is no music playing.
It is gloriously silent.  S.I.L.E.N.T.
Like right now......the ONLY thing I can hear is the ticking of the clock across the room.
Oh and the impending snow storm blowing in.

So as I am reading and studying yesterday, there is a distant chirp.
I pause and wonder if I heard something.
A few minutes later, I think I hear that again.
But I am so engrossed in what I am doing, that I barely notice.
Finally, it DOES get my attention.

WAIT!  Is that a SMOKE DETECTOR chirping?

I HATE chirping smoke detectors.

When the battery is dying, the chirp every 30 seconds (usually at 3 am).

Oh yes, it IS a smoke detector.
I get up from my desk to find the stupid thing.
You have to understand that we have eight or nine smoke detectors in this house.
Dying smopke detectors chirp every 30 seconds UNTIL you are looking for them.
Then you stand under EACH one training your ear for the chirp to see EXACTLY which one is dying.

Oh yes, I've dragged a barstool up and downstairs to plenty of smoke detectors, risked life and limb to replace the 9 volt battery, only to discover it's the one DOWN the hall that is really doing the chirping.

Chirp.......Chirp.....Chirp...Chirpetty, Chirp, Chirp Freakin Chirp.
Once you are on a mission to find the every 30 second chirp, it then moves on to an every 2 minute chirp.
So you hear the chirp, you run in the direction of the sound, you stand under the smoke detector and crane your neck...because you can't HEAR the chirp if you aren't LOOKING up at the detector. 
And then..........silence.
No chirp.
Just as you get a crick in your neck and start to roll your shoulders, CHIRP!
Wait, was it the one you are standing under?  Or did that come from downstairs?

After 20 minutes of going up and down stairs, I finally found the chirping misfit.
It was in the laundry room cupboard.
Yes....the laundry room cupboard.
No, it wasn't installed in the cupboard.
It's one that I ripped down off of the cathedral ceiling in my room when it wouldn't freaking stop chirping!

I know,  I know, we could light up a cigarette in bed (except we don't smoke) and start a fire in our room and the whole house would burn down and everyone would die because I took that smoke detector down.  Do NOT tell the fire department.......or they will remove the children from my home.  Wait....tell the fire department.

But it really does make sense to have not one, but two smoke detectors in the laundry room cupboards.  I can't remember where I ripped the other one down from.

That's where all the firecrackers and pop bottle rockets are and if they should spontanteously combust, we are soooo safe!  Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. chirp.  We'd run right by the exploding cupboard on our way out to the garage.  Or maybe, we'd take a different route.............better practice that at our next fire safety meeting.  So really..........I know what I'm doing.

And besides....why not keep the smoke detectors right next to the 9 volt batteries.
It makes it so much easier to replace them.  I'm a genius!
Found the chirping, replaced the battery, and threw it back in the laundry room cupboard.  Done, done, and done.
We're all safe now.

I can go back to S.I.L.E.N.C.E.