Sound and Fury

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth)

            The sounds of chainsaws, leaf blowers, snoring and jackhammers aren’t exactly music to our ears. But the ghostly noise that drove me wild was none of these.

            It started at six o’clock Saturday morning. Beep-beep-beep, then pause and repeat. Like the warning of a truck backing up, except that it went on and on.

            “What kind of alarm goes off at six in the morning?” I fumed. “Surely there is some kind of noise ordinance about things like that.”

            When work started at the home construction site nearby, the beeping seemed to stop. Some kind of security alarm, I thought. The hapless workers at the site were already on my hate list because of the horrible two days of sawing and chipping when they cleared trees to make room for the new house.

            The sound was back early Sunday morning. Beep-beep-beep. I posted a complaint on NextDoor, which is Complaint Central on the Internet. None of the neighbors had heard the noise, but they advised me to call the sheriff.

            When the beeping started again Monday morning, I was fit to be tied—or to call the sheriff. I went out front and glared at the construction site. I tried to make a video documenting the noise. I went into the back yard to see if it was louder there, and it was.

            The noise was coming from my garden shed, from a plastic bag. Omigosh, an old smoke alarm, ear-splitting, and I couldn’t get it apart to remove the battery.

            So I turned the hose on it, and it was like the scene in 2001 Space Odyssey, where the dying computer Hal sings “Daisy, Daisy” and says “I’m afraid, Dave.”

            The smoke alarm gasped and sputtered and then just clicked, tick-tick-tick, until I put it in a bucket and filled the bucket with water. The thing had been beeping on and off for at least 48 hours.

            I was really glad I hadn’t called the sheriff.