Desperate times call for desperate measures

Some people might think we have a lot of smoke detectors (do you think 12 in a normal home is a lot?), I suppose some people might even think us paranoid. We aren't really but we do like to be prepared. When I was a child I experienced watching flames shooting up over the tree tops while a neighbor's home burned to the ground with tragic results. And then several years ago Ken and I attended a seminar on Fire safety which made us even more want to be prepared. So we bought top of the line smoke detectors (which of course the ones that put on the seminar sold to us) for a pretty penny.

When we moved to the home we are in now we brought those along with us and added them to the ones that were already here. The expensive ones work just fine (or at least I hope they do, thankfully we haven't really had to test them out!) but the ones that were here are the type that are hooked up to the electricity so when one of them goes off all of them go off. All over the house in ear splitting, deafness creating noise. Usually they just respond to some burning food (oh surely not at my house!) but several times they have gone off with no apparent reason whatsoever. Several off those times were in the wee hours of the morning which of course caused Ken and I to jump out of bed and go running all over the house to see if there is a fire anywhere, and finding none we went uneasily back to bed hoping that we hadn't missed something. Another time was during a Bridal consultation, what fun to run all over the house chasing after a beep while I am supposed to be talking flowers. Eventually we did find the faulty detector that was the cause of all the problems and replaced and all was quite around here.

That is until a couple of days ago when during the middle of the day up they started again, and I wasn't even burning anything (Honestly!!!). One of them started and then soon the whole chorus was going. That sort of noise about drives me crazy!

I ran all over the house to make sure there wasn't anything wrong and finding nothing I decided I better start unhooking all the detectors to find the problem one. Thankfully the first one that I unhooked stopped the chorus but that one itself wouldn't shut up. It had a battery inside that I couldn't figure out how to get out. I decided to set it out in the garage on Ken's work bench where he would see (hear) it and take care of it when he got home.

However our garage is attached to our house and I could still hear it inside. There is little that irritates me worse than a constant beep beeping (just ask Ken about how I react to alarm clocks and keys left in cars while you have the car door open or don't have your seat belt on yet).

So out to the garage I went and decided to bury it under some sleeping bags.

Back inside, I can STILL hear the beeping.

Out to the garage again, I thought about the trash can outside but wasn't sure if it was truly trash and I didn't want to be irresponsible so I decided the empty freezer on the far side of the garage might work.

Back inside, STILL beeping. It is faint but still annoying....

Out to the garage AND the solution:
Can you see it?

In the sleeping bag, in the freezer, in the garage. I can still hear it in the garage, but in the house...

Blissful silence. No beeping, just the sweet sound of children!

Ken got a good laugh about it when he got home and showed me just how simple it was to get the battery out.