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Danger, DangerNovember 26, 2006 Rhodry started acting weird almost as soon as we settled in at our current horse-sit. Tuesday night he and Tillo (his German shepherd friend, whom we've known since she was a pup, barely two and a half years ago) disappeared into the woods. Tillo came back. Rhodry didn't. Rhodry went to the Lobdells', which for a trotting dog is about 15 minutes away through Chicama Vineyards. The Lobdells' house was dark when I collected him a little before 10 p.m. The next morning he did it again. Later he didn't want to come into the guesthouse where we live when we're looking after this particular herd. When he did, he huddled by the door and looked worried. "Listen to your dog" is standard, and good, advice, but Rhodry wasn't talking and whatever he wasn't saying eluded me. "Listen like your dog" finally got my attention. Beep -- beep -- beep . . . In the early hours of Friday morning, I threw back the covers and went in search of the dog-taunting beeps. Aha! A carbon monoxide detector was plugged into a wall socket in the unused bedroom. I yanked it. Blessed silence -- for about 30 seconds. Beep . . . A second detector was on duty next to the bathroom sink. Yanked that one too. Whew. No sooner had I pulled the covers half over my head than beep -- beep -- beep . . . The intervals were longer but it was just as obnoxious. I tracked this one to the smoke detector in the second bedroom. Since an identical device in the hall barely 10 feet away wasn't complaining, I figured the place wasn't on fire. The long and short is that attempts to silence the device were unsuccessful. A friend said the beeping meant the battery was low. Oh good -- maybe it'll just croak?? Not soon enough. Client said the detector could be detached from the ceiling. Finally I managed that much. Unplugging looked possible but wasn't: standing on a chair in dim light I couldn't read the raised white-on-white letters. I felt and jabbed and squeezed around for a lever or other release. No luck. Rhodry refused to approach the guesthouse: he'd skulk in another direction, toward the main house or into the woods, head down, tail low, like when he hears shooting in the woods. I had to drag him toward the sliding door, feeling like one of those nasty mothers who does toilet training by the book. I tied a rope to the post-and-rail fence outside the house so he wouldn't have to come in but I'd know he wasn't running back to the Lobdells'. He liked that better, but if I could hear the damned beeping through the glass I figured he could too. Last night I thought I'd finally tamed the beeper, by pushing a button till the steady green light blinked red, then pushing it again. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but for hours -- no beeps. To celebrate, and to make amends to Rhodry, I made popcorn. Rhodry loves popcorn. I didn't have all my paraphernalia with me, but on the counter was a box of microwave popcorn packets, Orveille Redenbacher® Gourmet® Popping Corn with Movie Theater Butter. Whether Movie Theater Butter bears much resemblance to the real thing I began to doubt when I read on the label that butter was less than 2% of the ingredients. I'd never made microwave popcorn before: it falls into the category of lite fat-free "healthy" foods that I conscientiously avoid whenever possible, but if the only popcorn life hands you is made for the microwave, get popping. Microwaving popcorn, I learned, is a dangerous activity. CAUTION: CONTAINS HOT OIL & STEAM it says under the barcode. Uh-oh. Maybe I should don firefighter's kit for the procedure, or at least flame-retardant gloves and undies? OPEN THIS END
DO NOT HANDLE BAG I was all set to use the Popcorn button on the resident microwave but Orville Redenbacher® told me not to so I didn't, though I did wish Orville had explained why the microwave has a Popcorn button if I'm not supposed to use it. My ancestors could start fires with a tinder box; I proved equal to punching in the recommended cook time (2 min 30 sec) and setting (high), and to removing and opening the popped bag without scorching myself. The popcorn was OK. Movie Theater Butter isn't nearly as good as my current favorite popcorn dressing: real butter, tamari, brewer's yeast, and a few grinds of black pepper. Rhodry liked it well enough. Tillo wasn't sure at first that it was edible but she followed Rhodry's lead and seemed to approve. Turns out the celebration was premature. At about 3 a.m. the bleeping beeper beeped again. I got up to mess with it but only succeeded in eliciting an ear-splitting squawk. After finishing the barn this morning, I took both dogs for a walk in the woods. Rhodry again tried to skulk off instead of coming into the house. I declared a duel to the death. This time I brought a knife to pry open the battery compartment. If you're supposed to replace rundown batteries, it has to open somehow, right? It did. Inspired by one small success, I pried the plug out of its socket. The goddamn thing kept beeping! I extracted the battery. Beep! Did I have a HAL 9000 on my hands?? Was the smoke detector going to start singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb"? No. After another minute of dwindling beeps, the eviscerated device finally shut up. An hour or so later, my ever-forgiving but never-forgetting old puppy deigned to come into the house. What I'm wondering now is how many smoke detectors get sledgehammered in the course of a year. Does anyone keep statistics? Are any householders electrocuted because they rip the wires out of the ceiling without rubber soles on their feet? What lobby decided that what we all needed for our own good was smoke detectors, and what would it take to get bullshit detectors installed in every conference room and office of every government building in the land? What if every advertisement in whatever medium was required to carry a warning: Corporation X has paid big bucks to bring you this message but impartial reviewers say that it is only 14% true.
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