Thursday, March 23, 2017

Pocket vs the Smoke Alarm

I do not like loud noises.  Loud unexplained noises are even worse. 
Last week I was peacefully lying in bed with my parents when suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a raptor knocking on our storm door.  My head picked up, my ears turned, I felt queasy and began to shake.  A minute later the sound repeated.
The noise and me climbing to the head of the bed woke mommy up.  Daddy, who sleeps with earbuds jammed in his head, didn’t hear the sound.  He stayed asleep until I climbed on his head and began to shimmy.
“Pocket what are you doing?” he asked.  He unstuck the buds from his ears.  
“There is a noise,” Mommy said.  She was not getting out of bed to check.  Mommy does not get out of bed to check on possible monsters.  That is Daddy’s department.
He got up.  The raptor knocking continued.  He left the room.  Mommy grabbed me and tried to hold on.  I was a rattling little pepper with four squirming legs.  
Us dogs, when we first wake up, are fully cognizant.  Our parents need a few minutes for their brains to reboot.  Daddy got up, got dressed, and stumbled into the living room.  He waited for the sound.  It happened again.  I began to shake faster.  Daddy determined that it was not a vicious raptor but a malfunctioning smoke alarm.   We have two smoke alarms in our house:  One in the kitchen and one in the living room. He figured it was not the living room unit, but his brain was not operating enough to conclude the kitchen alarm was the culprit   
The kitchen alarm made the raptor sound, and I trembled so much I rearranged my ribs.  Daddy got on a chair and took down the alarm.  He found the mute button and quieted the raptor.  He got back in bed where he held me, petted me, scratched me and cuddled me for an hour and a half until I finally settled down.  I was still nervous, but I passed out from tremble exhaustion.  
In the morning Daddy took down the alarm, replaced the batteries, hung it back up and tested it.  The raptors were back!  Daddy went on the Google and found that raptor scratching is the sound an alarm makes just before it dies. He took it down and removed the batteries.  He made sure it wouldn’t bother us again.  My parents would replace the alarm on the weekend.  And we still had the alarm in the living room.
The next morning the raptor tried getting out of the living room alarm too.  I began running around the kitchen like Rain Man after he burned the Pop Tarts.  Daddy quickly disarmed the raptor.  
We had to go two nights without any smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, but my parents knew they were all right.  If anything went wrong, they knew I would stand on their heads.
A Pocket alarm is the best kind of alarm.  I wake you up without any noise.
Silence is the best.


11 comments:

  1. Couldn't agree more sweet Pocket. Many years ago before I was even a twinkle in my doggy daddy's eye Mom stacked chairs and stools in the bedroom doorway to beat to death a fire alarm that went off while she was baking a cheesecake. That took so much energy and effort she's never thought about replacing it.

    We appreciate you sharing your experience with these monsters as you've reminded Mom she really needs to get Dad to replace these squawking, squealing screaming things.

    Love, Molly and my Mom

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  2. We agree. Why have stupid smoke alarms when dogs are better detectors.

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  3. We're the alarms here, too. We had a smoke detector, but our house is so small, it kept going off when SHE burnt stuff....which was a fairly regular occurrence! We put it in a drawer the day, it went off, the phone rang, we dogs were barking like crazy and the neighbours came over to see what was going on.

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  4. Oh, we hate it when those batteries need replacing in the middle of the night - it sure does scare ALL of us. Glad you Dad was able to get rid of those raptors.

    Woos - Lightning and Misty

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  5. We know exactly what you are talking about! We have a detector in every room!

    Your Pals,

    Murphy & Stanley

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  6. EVERYBUDDY should be so LUCKY to have a POCKET Alarm to keep them so safe. Sorry all that stuffs scared you..

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  7. The pocket alarm idea is the best.
    Your Furend
    Louis Dog Armstrong

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  8. Why do they always go off in the middle of the night. WE have four in our house and it is a challenge to figure out which one is screaming at us
    hugs
    Mr bailey, Hazel & Mabel

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  9. I so agree... I made a rocket start as the co-warner started to scream like a banshee... and the mamam needed 87 hours to remove the batteries... uuuuh

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  10. Our smoke detector went off this week, too. We don't know why because there was no smoke. Dad replaced our old detectors last year, so this was a check on how it was working. Mom said it went off because we smell so bad.

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  11. Yipes! That happened at our house a couple months ago. Those things can be so loud!

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Monday Question

  Have your parents bought anything for you for anxiety? Not me, but my parents...