Category: colorado

Yesterday morning, one of the smoke detectors started its low battery chirp.  I took it down, but couldn’t figure out how to remove the battery.  I didn’t think Jack would think it was a sufficient emergency for me to wake him up before he would normally wake up.  I put it in the mudroom, where I wouldn’t hear it chirp, since the mudroom is on the other side of an exterior door.    When Jack got up, I asked him to remove the battery and it stopped chirping.

Later, when I went out to feed horses, I was astonished to hear the chirp again:  same pitch, but at a more rapid interval.  I was finally able to track the source of the sound: a magpie sitting on a telephone wire.  It must have heard the smoke alarm chirping in the mudroom, through the dog door, and decided to incorporated the sound in its repertory. 

Two recent fires in Colorado, the Oxyoke fire near Deckers, Colorado, and the Hilltop Fire near Parachute, are both now 100% contained, thanks to the valiant effort on the part of the firefighters. I’ve been through Deckers, which is not all that far from our house as the crow flies, but is a considerable drive on mountain roads. As is my habit, when I heard about the Deckeres fire, I found it via Google Maps, and discovered that Deckers, Colorado has a street view on Google Maps. (Colorado Springs doesn’t rate high enough to be on Google Street Views.) Check it out if you want to see the proverbial one-horse Colorado mountain hamlet. Be sure to rotate the view (arrows in upper left) so you can see the mountain stream.