Anyone remember the possessed vacuum cleaner we blogged about 9 months ago? Last night at 4:25 am, as we waited to see if Loud Thing was going to puke any more, we heard the vacuum cleaner rev up on the other side of the house. Granted, the "other side" isn't very far when your house is the size of ours, but my first thought was, "This time, I'm getting rid of that creepy thing." (I had the batteries out for awhile but reinserted them since Loud Thing loves that vacuum cleaner like the cats love tuna.)
Then the earthquake hit. We're in TN, but the 4:30 am Indiana earthquake was felt up to 350 miles away, which includes our area.
Who knew the evil toy was a seismograph?
However, at the time the earthquake wasn't identifiable by us as an earthquake. After the bed stopped shaking and the creaks, groans and thumps that SEEMED to be coming from the upstairs were over, we searched the house for the cats, assuming they'd activated the vacuum cleaner and played a violent game of tag that somehow encompassed both our bed and the bonus room. (Wouldn't be a first.) You don't think too clearly at 4:30 am when you've been up with a sick kid all night.
But in the piercingly bright sun of the morning, I discovered that our household intruder (we even checked to see if the cars had been stolen!) was seismic waves, and I began to wonder if the last time the evil vacuum cleaner sounded off had been seismographic. The date of the last incident with the toy was early September 2007. According to the earthquake chart for this area, there were zero earthquakes we might have felt in 2007, though there was a teeny one in Arkansas around that time. The other one I distinctly remember was in 2003 and we didn't own the vacuum yet.
Which doesn't mean the toy isn't a seismograph. It might only register earthquakes that are above 5 on the scale. I guess that's not all that handy, which means the toy STILL has no redeeming qualities. I need to post a vid so you can hear how psycho it sounds.
JW
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3 comments:
Maybe it's more sensitive than you realize. (Sensitive in a hairtrigger sense, not in a new age guy sense.) On par with cats and dogs that freak when they know something weird is about to happen.
But I'd still take the batteries out if I were you.
I once had a Micro-go-round that would start rotating at all hours of the night. Maybe it was a seismograph, too!
The last time we had a noticeable earthquake here, our big boy dog had started whining for no apparent reason just a few minutes before. Dogs and cats definitely know about stuff like this before we humans do.
Our last microwave used to start by itself. That was freaky. We had to pull the plug when we weren't using it until we bought a new one. It wasn't that old either, but the warranty was expired.
That earthquake must have been freaky too. Although I know we have faultlines in the midwest, it's something we don't expect.
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