colorado – Page 34 – Five Acres with a View

According to the CS Independent, early voting in Colorado Springs starts Monday, October 20. Centennial Hall is two blocks from where I work. The 2008 State Ballot Information Booklet, also known as the Blue Book, is available online. The Blue Book gives a fairly objective overview of issues on the ballot, and is guaranteed to be better than hot milk for curing insomnia.

Mimic

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.