Susan Fuchtman

Yesterday the smoke detector in our apartment started chirping that terrible chirp that you can’t ignore, and saying in a woman’s voice “low battery.” “Chirp. Low battery.” “Chirp. Low battery.” My husband replaced the batteries and she kept chirping and asking for a battery. He pushed buttons to reset it, which resulted in squawking, something that sounded a little like the world ending, and another request for batteries in that calm woman’s voice. Mike the maintenance guy ended up taking the smoke alarm out of the apartment (she still chirped in the hallway) and replacing it with a new one. And I wondered, what sends a smoke alarm over the edge like that? We don’t cook much, and there was only once where we had enough smoke that she had to sound the alarm. We did notice the former tenants had placed postage stamps over her openings, and we removed them. Maybe she preferred the stamps.