Alarming matters

Here’s a philosophical poser for you:

Why is it that the batteries in your smoke detectors always start going bad during the hours when (if you’re lucky) you’re in your deepest, most restorative sleep?

Over the past year or so, every time one of my five alarms started that shrill insistent beeping (and let me just say that cathedral ceilings and fake hardwood floors provide the perfect environment for that sound to echo throughout the house and drill into your brain) somewhere between 0100 and 0400.

Never once during daylight hours. How do they do that?

Yesterday it was at 0230. By this time I had only three working smoke alarms (because I hadn’t got around to buying 9V batteries), but I still had to go around the entire place listening for which one of the three was actually beeping. By the time I found it and got it off the ceiling, I was thoroughly awake, and it took me a good hour to get back to sleep again.

This did force me to finally go out and get a supply of 9V batteries, and I got all three tested and mounted again, so I should be street legal in case the fire marshals show up for a surprise inspection.

Until some night between midnight and 0400 when one of the five goes off again.