"Your Dumpster is Beeping"

Alison, our next-door neighbor called me in the office - at 12:30am. Fortunately I was still working.

"Your dumpster is beeping, and it's REALLY loud."

"Oh crap, I bet the decon crew threw away one of the smoke detectors, and now the battery is dying."

I ran across the street to get some jeans and sneakers on - figuring I was in for trouble inside of a dumpster full of nails and broken wood. You could hear the beeping clearly all the way over there (like 400 feet away). Cathy mentioned in the morning that she heard it from bed also, but wasn't sure what it was.

So, after getting a ladder and a flashlight, and with Jim's help (Alison's husband), I managed to climb up into dumpster, on a search for the dying detector.

Thankfully, it was easy to find in the top layer of debris - I turned it off and ripped out the battery, and climbed out of the dumpster.

This turned out to be a funny episode, but wow, it could have been BAD - having to unload a 7-foot-deep dumpster full of nail-filled boards, twisted metal, and broken concrete in the dark, at 1am - searching for a beeper - surrounded by angry neighbors...not a recipe for amusement.

But, it only took a few minutes and nobody got hurt, so we got a funny story out of it, at least.