Everybody has that one neighbour.
If you don’t think you do, consider the rule of the poker table — if you can’t spot the sucker within the first half hour, it’s you.
Turns out, I’m that neighbour.
For the second night in a row, I was blasted out of bed at
2 a.m. last Sunday by an ear-splitting siren going off in my dining room.
Although it had been silent all day, my CO/natural gas detector was once again howling and flashing a blue light, indicating a gas leak.
A red light, identifying carbon monoxide, would have sent me scurrying out the door, dialling 911 on the way.
But in this case, for the second night in a row, I unplugged the device, frantically wrapped it in a bath towel and stuffed it to the bottom of my laundry hamper to muffle the noise, in an effort to spare my poor neighbours.
Then I sniffed the air throughout my condo and once again detected . . . nothing.
There was no smell of rotten eggs to indicate that my natural gas fireplace was leaking any of the highly combustible fuel, never mind that I had shut off the gas at the first sign of trouble the night before.
Unlike the first night’s frantic scramble, which came just before 5 a.m., this time, I couldn’t just stay up, huddled under a blanket with all the windows open, so I ventilated the place as best I dared in the middle of the night and went back to bed.
I’d waited all day Saturday for a return call from a fireplace serviceman that never came, so first thing in the morning, I swallowed my pride and called the Fortis emergency line.
Apologetically, I explained that although I didn’t think any lives were in imminent danger, I had no idea why my alarm kept sounding. He agreed it was a mystery and sent out a tech, who quickly diagnosed the problem — a dead battery.
Huh. A battery back-up. Who knew?
And, unlike me, it probably didn’t die of embarrassment.
After testing the air and assuring me all was well, this very understanding man then gave me an informative tour of my fireplace, explaining what signs to look for if I ever again suspected it was trying to kill me.
You’d suppose I’d have learned my lesson after the same thing happened a few years earlier with an alarm system that I’d never used — and therefore had never bothered to learn to deactivate.
Its back-up battery died, setting it off (you guessed it) in the middle of the night. After frantically pushing all the buttons on the keypad a dozen times or so, to no avail, I was eventually forced to pull the siren itself out of the wall — Incredible Hulk-style — bringing with it several inches of drywall.
It’s amazing the strength you can conjure at 4 a.m. when you’re convinced your upstairs neighbour will be down to murder you at any moment.
But this time, there had been no warning chirps or blinking lights to indicate anything was amiss.
Why it couldn’t just tell me it needed a fresh battery instead of faking a gas leak, I’ll never know, but consider it a lesson learned.
From now on, when it comes to smoke and gas detectors, I’ll endeavour to be that one neighbour who remembers to regularly change the batteries, and the one who (pride be damned) makes the right phone call the first time.
