Alarmed

4:00 a.m.

We wake to the shrill, insistent beeping of the house alarm.

I’m stupid with sleep, so I take several seconds to get out of bed, cross the dark room, and check the control panel. I fumble with the keypad, trying to enter my code and stop the noise.

My blood runs cold when the screen displays the words, “Interior Door – Garage to Living Room – Open.”

We’ve had false alarms before. Sensors sometimes fall off doors; other times, a battery in a sensor goes suddenly bad. Both set the system off. But coming as it does on the heels of several hundred dollars going missing, this alert frightens me.

I am stunned that we spend several minutes debating what to do. I am all for calling the police. Clyde is all about going to check on the door. In my mind, this is an easy decision to make, based on the “What’s the worst case scenario?” game.

If this is a sensor error, and we call the police, the worst case scenario is a little wasted time for Jackson’s finest, and, perhaps, a little embarassment for us.

If this an intruder is in our house, and we don’t call the police, the worst case scenario could easily be too awful to imagine.

Clyde wins. We move through the house, bringing up lights as we go. The cats, normally on us the minute we open the bedroom door, are nowhere to be seen. We clear room after room, making our way back to the living room.

The door to the garage area stands ajar.

I freeze in place. While the sound of the alarm most likely scared our visitor away, I also realize someone could still be in the house.

The cats are in the garage — one of the places cats are not allowed to go — slinking around the corners. The garage is open to the night. To make things even creepier, a single bird is trapped inside, swooping back and forth like a bat, beating itself against the walls and door.

The doors leading to the pool bath and sauna — tight quarters, under rennovation — are closed. I’m in no hurry to open them.

Back inside, the doors closed and locked, the alarms activated, we sit at our computers, dazed by the early hour but too wired to sleep. I’m angry — at the disruption of our routine, at the intruder, at Clyde for his refusal to call the police, at myself for not taking the phone and doing so regardless.

7:30 a.m.

Clyde’s Junior Armchair Detective investigation produces the following explanation for our “intruder”:

1) We left the outer garage door open, likely overnight — or at least long enough for a bird to get inside.

2) Given that the door to our living room was still locked when we found it open, it’s likely the door wasn’t closed securely when we went to bed.

SOLUTION: We had a windy night; the breeze likely pushed the door in.

I have also conducted my own investigation, and have come to the following conclusions:

1) A hooked maniac with a universal garage door remote opened our garage door.

2) The hooked maniac manuvered a complicated, flexible metal snake, complete with fiber optic camera, under our door. Using spring-loaded retractable metal claws, he opened the door.

3) The alarm spooked him … but, being a clever, full-time hooked maniac, he thought to lock the door in hopes of throwing us off his trail. As he shuffled off on his pegleg, he neglected to pull the door closed behind him.

4) One of the neighborhood birds, grateful for the seed we’ve been spreading around the patio area out back, swooped into the garage and attacked the hooked maniac, pecking out his eyes and driving him into the night.

SOLUTION: I have called the Jackson police and asked them to be on the look out for an angry pirate with strands of bloody tissue dangling from his eye sockets.