As soon as I walked into the kitchen, I heard it. One of the appliances was vibrating in a death-rattle.
In the past, I’ve thrown a party when one much-hated appliance or another has given up the ghost. And with joy, I went straight for the microwave oven, hoping that faint humming had morphed into the kind of buzz meaning we had to get rid of it. But no love, it was quiet.
The whole house, in fact, was quiet because I’d just dropped off my Kiddos at the bus stop. So I could hear the rattling wherever I went in the kitchen. It didn’t seem to come from the fridge. I opened the door to listen outside, but it wasn’t from there. I pulled out the fridge to hear behind it, but not there. The closest I came to hearing it for real was when I put my head in the dishwasher, and there it was loudest. I wondered if we needed a service call because it wasn’t even on, and it was making this horrible buzz.
I killed the power to the dishwasher, and now I got frightened because the buzz continued. The pump or something was still running, and probably going to burn itself out trying to swallow some glop of dishwasher-drain pudding. And I didn’t want it to burn the house down. I couldn’t get it out of the cabinet, and I wondered if I should unscrew it from the sideboard in order to get a handle on what part was buzzing.
I pressed my head to the dishwasher and could hear it coming from one side of the dishwasher, except there weren’t moving parts there, high up on the right side.
And then I opened the silverware drawer off to the side, and I found this guy, turned on and attempting to run in the spoon slot:
Yeah.
Some Kiddo’s idea of a joke? I have no idea. I’m just glad I found it before I called the appliance repair guy.
Ah, kids… LOL At least you didn’t have a wasted call.
The repair dudes usually take three days to get out here, but I”d have panicked and said it was an emergency, and they’d have arrived before the silly bug’s battery ran down. Think of the shame when they found it, too. :-b
Just this week I nearly left an angry/desperate message for the people who last year installed our chimney cap about the animal trapped in the flue that used to serve our now-gone wood burning stove, the animal now scrabbling against the styrofoam blocking the flue and trying to escape into the room.
Then my daughter explained it was the chickens from her computer game – my husband’s computer desk is on the hearth and she had left the game running but the screensaver on when she went to unload the dishwasher.
They would have been talking about me for weeks.
I’m glad you too found the cause of your mysterious noise.
That’s really funny. 🙂 But you know, if you’re not expecting to hear chickens in your living room, it makes sense that you’d be hearing an animal in the chimney.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had to tell at least two customer service folks something to the effect of “Please feel free to pin me to your Wall Of Stupid Customers, right near the top. 🙂