Things that go squawk in the night

Two nights ago, husband and I lay slumbering in our bed, when for no good reason our smoke detector started shrieking, rocketing us onto the ceiling. It lasted for about 5 seconds and then went silent. There was no fire, no smoke, no conceivable reason for it to have scared the living poop out of us. Husband climbed up on a stool and tried to figure out if it needed batteries or something, which was hilarious to me because he sleeps au natural. I was able to go back to sleep, but husband was awake since three a.m..

This morning, 6:15 on a Saturday, we woke to a horrible commotion. It sounded like someone was torturing several chickens and had forgotten to gag them before starting in with the plucking. After lying in bed for several minutes waiting for it to stop, I got up, put on my robe, went out the back door, surveyed the cityscape, identified the source of the noise (our neighbors across the alley) came back in, got dressed, wrote a nasty note explaining that it's unpleasant to be woken up at 6:15 on a Saturday by chickens, especially when you live in a densely populated city and headed outside again. As I began walking down the alley, the neighbor's garage door opened half way and a woman came shimmying out. I asked her what was going on and she explained that one of her chickens had gotten into the neighbor's yard, decided it was a bad idea and set off a series of shrieking that could have woken Colonel Sanders from the dead. She seemed genuinely upset about her chicken, so I didn't rip her head off like I originally intended, but I do wonder why it took her close to thirty minutes to decide to save her precious pet.

Okay, fine. Chickens feather's unruffled, blood pressure dropping to a normal level, cuddling up with husband to get some sleep and then beep, beep, beep, 7:15 and the construction crew down the street decided to put in some Saturday hours. Guess I'll make a pot of coffee.

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