I’ve been run off my feet at work, accumulating overtime at an alarming rate and piles on my desk at a nearly concurrent one. I don’t really mind that, because in general the piles are allowed to wait until after the overtime and so forth—the folks are reasonable. But after about four weeks in overdrive, a person gets downright crotchetty from tiredness (not to mention becomes blog-neglectful.) So it was that when I entered my abode last night all I really wished to think about was some food and possibly a movie, and my brain flatly refused to think about the loud squeak I heard as I was locking the door.

As I was shucking off my work shoes, it squeaked again, and I couldn’t really continue to ignore it. It was the sound of a small unoiled wheel, or a large self-confident rodent. I opened up ‘Date/Time’ on my laptop, and it seemed to occur around 30 seconds apart, somewhere around every five minutes. Too regular for an ROUS, but rather odd for anything else.

It was not my alarm clock. It was not my washing machine. I carried out my ablutions in a peregrinatory manner, closing doors and waiting patiently and finally determining the sound to have come from the crafts room. Up close, it sounded like a rather strident squeak-beep. It came from above my head. Then, 30 seconds later, it came from down the hall. I climbed up on a chair in my bedroom and examined the smoke alarm. Far from being out of juice, it’s hooked in to a continuous AC supply! Nonetheless, SQUEEP it did, to the distress of my tympanic membrane, and I read around the button, ‘PUSH TO HUSH’, which I thought a rather amusing way of putting it.

That smoke alarm duly ‘hushed’, I moved my chair of operations to the crafts room. ‘PUSH TO HUSH’ the button informed me. I pushed. SQUEEP. This did not seem much like hushing. I pushed again. SQUEEP. I waited with bated breath. SQUEEP, it insisted. I held the button down to test the smoke alarm (do this ‘weekly’, the inscription read. I wonder how many good little boys and girls do so?) SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP it emitted, in a good simulation of danger. SQ-P it added, and entered its recurring SQUEEP state. I pressed the button again. SQUEEP, it said morosely, and fell silent for six minutes.

Emboldened, I prepared to go over to Ryan’s for a movie. SQUEEP, the smoke alarm broke across my industriousness. SQUEEP, it repeated five seconds later, in case I had not heard. A model of self-restraint, I jabbed the button again, with predictable results. “Fine!” I said, and threw myself down in a chair. Five minutes, six minutes, seven….

“I’m leaving now. And if you decide to do that again at ten o’clock at night, please note I have earplugs and I’m not afraid of you!”

This was a bit of an inadvertent bluff, as I realized at 4 am when a parched mouth woke me and a triumphant SQUEEP roused me to wrath. Should I wear earplugs, I would doubtless sleep through my alarms and awake when I should already be standing at a Hospitality Desk in East Portland. I stumped out into the crafts room and pressed. SQUEEP. Press. SQUEEP. Test. SQUEEEEEEEEEP SQ-P. I sat down on the chair. SQUEEP! it remarked from on high. I refrained from replying, “Squeep you!” for it seemed to me that language would only awaken me further. Finally, I withdrew from the crafts room, closed the doors, trailed down to my bedroom, and pulled off my robe. I stuffed its hem under the crack in the door and piled its sound-dampening fluffiness liberally thereupon. I turned the fan to high and lay down. SQUEEP, something may have cried in the darkness, but I don’t know, for I didn’t hear it. This morning, the sound is gone, and one feels a little silly contacting the management about a vanished problem. I’m sitting ten feet from the innocent-looking disk this moment, and it hasn’t disturbed me one jot. Still, I don’t trust the little beggar. I think it’s a penthouse gremlin condo. And I think I’m going to need extra coffee today.