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.