Several years ago, in one of those in-between sleep and awake moments, my conciousness was raised by the chirping of a cricket outside our bedroom window. I lay there for sometime listening to it. At one point, I remembered that I had read or heard somewhere that you could determine the temperature by counting the seconds between the chirps and multiplying by something. So I tried. But I couldn't come up with a suitable multiplier that would produce a result close to what I knew the temperature should be. (Or does that only work with thunder and lightning?)

Anyway, as I became more awake, the volume of the chirping seemed so loud that I figured the cricket had to be in the house. It was way too loud to be outside. So I got out of bed and searched behind, under and around the bed, in the closet, all over the bedroom with no success. Off I went on a search of the first floor. I was obsessed.

Through the den, into the living room, on to the kitchen, altering my direction as the sound became louder or softer. All the time walking softly so as not to scare off my prey. Finally, as I turned the corner from the dining room into the hall, I knew success was in the offing. The chirping was louder than it had been at any point in my quest. I quickly returned to the kitchen for a plastic bag with which to capture the beast and return it to its natural backyard habitat. But upon returning to the hall I became disoriented. The sound was emanating not from the floor where I had suspected it to be, but from above my head.

And sure enough, as my gaze climbed slowly from the baseboard along the floor, up the flowered wall-paper, to the ceiling directly above my head, there it was! Staring back at me from its perch with it's single, menacing red eye threateningly flashing....













....the smoke alarm pleading for its battery to be changed.
In deference to my status as family patriarch, my wife and children only remind me of this when I am foolish enough to point out dumb things they've done. They will, however, ask me why I was looking for a cricket at 6:30 in the morning in June. ( Do they really only chirp at night? I'm still a city kid) And to this day my wife swears that if she could have found a glass jar big enough, she would have filled it with grass, dropped in the smoke alarm, put holes in the lid and given it a place of honor along with my High Gross golf trophies.

Dan