odd sounds

I pointed out the noise in the wall to my husband so now he has the creeps too. I noticed the other night that it got louder as I prayed. It's easy to imagine it as a cicada that has prematurely sprouted wings and attempts to fly within the wall, but my husband heard something different; a rat crunching away on its stores down in its nest. It brought to mind his dislike for the sound of the dog's footrpints as she trots across the parque floors, her toenails adding clatter to every step.

Another troubling sound; the whine we've had in the kitchen ventilation fan for the last year. I had someone come and try to fix it last year but we got a bad repairman who just insisted that it was working normally even though the high pitched straining sound was not what the machine came home with. Today we got another repairman to address the problem, about a month before the warranty of the microwave hood expired and we were on our own. I was expecting the worst - another repairman who denied the problem, or someone who blamed the situation on the installation, which is not covered by warranty.

Nothing happened like I expected it to, our repairman was competent and decent, and there was no argument over who was liable for the cost of the repairs. As he dissassembled the ventilation pipe he moaned softly to himself, in the vent he found the remnants of a sparrow that had gotten in the shaft.

So now here's the first order of business: place a large gauge screen over the exhaust vent. This time I can't complain about
"how they make things these days."