Did you hear that Beep? It’s likely happened to you before and it usually happens in the middle of the night. The dreaded battery dying in the smoke detector. Over the past few years, I have even seen commercials on television around daylight savings time reminding people to change the batteries in their fire alarms when they change the time on the clock. I actually follow this recommendation because I dont like to be woken in the middle of the night by the BEEP sound.

Several years ago, Michael and I had taken a day off to do some christmas shopping while the girls were at school. We had a list and when shopping was done at the mall, they opened early during the holiday season. We went to the local mall, knocked out our list and headed to IHOP for a patty melt (I just love a patty melt) and headed home for the afternoon before the girls got home from school.

We werent home long when I heard BEEP. Here we go, I thought, trying to figure out which of the 7 smoke detectors was beeping. Michael and I decided to tag team and wait for the next beep to see which smoke detector it came from. “It’s the one in the hallway” I said. “No, no, its the one in Hunter’s room.” “Wait, its the one at the bottom of the stairs!” We want on like this for about 30 minutes or so until I finally went to the garage to get whatever 9v batteries we had and replaced all the batteries we would. It felt like the problem was solved and then BEEP. As we continued to try and track down which smoke detector was beeping, we noticed the smoke detector in the playroom was a different make and model than the rest of them. That had to be it, we thought, the smoke detector itself was defective. Michael pulled that one out and headed up to Lowes to get a replacement.

When he returned, we installed the new smoke detector and thought all was well, until about 5 minutes later……BEEP. At this point it became funny as well as frustrating. This time we were convinced the defective smoke detector was the one in our room, so Michael took it down and was preparing to replace it with the one he had bought earlier at Lowes. While we was working in the bedroom, I went to my work office to check messages and as I was stepping out into the hallway I heard it. BEEP. This time it was the loudest I had heard all afternoon, so I stood in the doorway and waited to hear it again. BEEP. But wait, it wasn’t from up above, it was coming from closer to the floor. I looked in the direction of the noise and what did I find, but the plug in carbon monoxide detector.

Did you know that if you put on your reading glasses and read the small print on the back of a plug in carbon monoxide detector, it will say that the detector has an expiration date (stamped on the detector) and it will signal with a BEEP when the detector has expired.

All in all, we spent about 3 hours that day tracking down what we thought was the source of the BEEP. When we figure out what it was and thought about how comical it must have been to see us running all around the house trying to track down the mysterious beeping. That thought had us laughing on an off the remainder of the day.

All these years later, I still change the batteries in the smoke detectors in spring and in fall. When I do, I remember back to that afternoon chasing down the BEEP.