Mystery Alarm, Part 2

But back to our problem with the mystery alarm. After poking the fire alarm with a long stick, to no effect, Cheryl and I regrouped for a strategy meeting and it became clear that only one option remained: I would need to climb the 12 ft. ladder to the top and risk breaking my neck (or fouling my pants).

As I mentioned, this was certainly not a typical fire alarm. We could just barely hear it from the TV room. How could this feeble bleating possibly wake us up in case of a fire? Had we pursued that question more fully, had we used the analytical capability of our human brains, it may have led us to a quicker and less embarrassing resolution.

Instead, I began climbing the ladder, and by ladder step #6 I might as well have been hanging from the bottom of a helicopter during a firefight in Vietnam, at night, with brightly lit tracer bullets flashing past my head. Such is the nature of my acrophobia. By step #7, the contents of my bowels threatened to become liquid and volatile.

Cheryl then suggested that I take the fireplace poker and see if I could poke the alarm. The wooden stick, in her mind, was a bit excessive, but the iron poker was OK. So I tried reaching up with the poker but it was still too far away. I'd need to take another step.

More later...