More adventures in rent-stabilized living

Sirens are always blaring in Brooklyn. I've learned, to my amazement, to sleep through them, or at least not remember them when I wake. Sometimes they're even accompanied with the low hum of large truck engines in the street which shake the floor and mirror and the windows. And I ignore them, because it's just another neighbor who had a heat attack.

This morning was no different. Until I heard Colin, next to me: "Do you smell smoke?"

Why yes, I did. I noticed the acrid smell of burning oil greeting my one unstuffed nostril in the late morning air. And - coincidentally? Three fire trucks parked outside the building, lights flashing. And the sound of large boots coming up the stairs.

Clothes first, then bathroom. I pulled a shirt over my head while on the toilet, and listening to the boots get closer - surely fire fighters coming to evacuate me and all the neighbors - made a mental list of the things I should insist on grabbing before being cast onto the cold, wet street for hours.

Coat, cell phone, a bottle of water. Wallet. Last, shoes. The trucks were a good sign, I theorized, that little would be destroyed in a blaze. Fire is something we often consider as a distinct possibility in our building. There are a lot of people living in close proximity, in an old building, not to mention adjoining buildings, and any one of us could make a mistake. That's why we have insurance.

We skip the whole feel the door thing and open it to several voices echoing in the hallway. Three firefighters, donning thick jackets with glow-in-the dark yellow stripes and wielding axes, are gathering information as best they can from our disabled neighbor across the hall. There is a loud beeping noise coming from downstairs.

One man steps forward, carrying in his right hand a small object that looks like a weapon from Start Trek. As he comes through our doorway, it's making alarming squacking noises. A CO2 detector.

Now, lest you should judge us, I want to say right here that we do keep a CO2 detector like any good citizens. But last week it started babbling at us that the batteries were dead. And I'm on this new kick to replace all batteries in the house with rechargeable ones, right? And do you think they carry them at the hardware store down the street? Nope. So it went "on the list" And the CO2 detector, unused for several years, has sat open, waiting for batteries, on the kitchen table, since exactly last Tuesday.

And here the writer began to smell smoke again. At first she was sure it was just sensory recall from writing the story of this morning, but...no...open the hallway door. CHUCK full of smoke again.

So if I should die and my laptop be recovered, let this be a lesson to all - when there's smoke, leave the building.

Where was I? Star trek device, squacking, beeping...strapping, dripping men with big boots tromping into the bedroom. Not such a bad thing, that part.

"Set phasers to stun!" he said as he crossed the threshold. No, he didn't.

"It's registering at 90 parts per million," states the strapping, dripping man authoritatively. He never takes his eyes off the machine. "We turned off the boiler. You should be OK if you air out." He brings the Star Trek device into the kitchen. "Open the windows," he commands. We do it.

Now our windows aren't all graceful to get at. I wasn't sure what happened until later when Colin, who witnessed from behind, described it, but I remember turning on the big white fan, leaning over the bed toward a window and disturbing the big green ball which lives rather precariously, perched between the bed and the wall. The big green ball, in turn, disturbed the big white fan, which went face down on the floor and stated making a sound like, "Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!"

Thinking one of the blades was broken, I turned it off, quick-like. Then I started thinking about Jessica's dogs, upstairs. And then about Kristina's dog, downstairs. I don't wait or the blades to stop moving.

"What was in the fan?" I ask Colin, who has gone to investigate.

"You don't wanna know," he says.

We have recently begun a campaign of Shock and Awe in an attempt to control the mouse population recently on the rise, quite possibly because there are several walls open in several apartments due to leaks which are as yet still leaking into walls which are as yet cracked and broken open.

I asked Colin to bring home traps one night last week, and I meant snap traps. He brought glue traps.

"This is all they had at the grocery store," he explained, and started placing them about the kitchen in corners.

"I don't like glue traps," I said. "I thought you would got to the hardware store."

"I'll deal with them," he said.

"Okay..." I said.

And so when, a few hours later, I heard this teensy, horrid little SCREAMING coming from the corner in the kitchen, I naturally turned straight on my heel and called in the resident Man. The screaming intensified as The Man did whatever he did to that mouse and I shuddered, and then cried in the next room.

These creatures have relatively developed nervous systems. There's a reason why a mouse -why any creature - screams like that. He knows he's in trouble, he knows he's trapped. I've seen studies on what happens to animals when they're rendered helpless - cortisol levels, heart rates, dilated pupils, and so on; Dude. They KNOW.

And there's reason why mice are used as surrogate humans in experiments. They are similar to us.

"No more glue traps." I said to Colin in a measured voice as we left the apartment that night.

And so it is we've since gone at them with snap traps, and poison, and yes there's still a -torture- trap sitting on the counter which hasn't caught anyone, yet, thank god.

But we never expected that THE FAN was also a weapon in our arsenal.

"I can't figure out how to get it out," calls The Man as I search for shoes and grab my phone and the spare keys to Jessica's apartment. "Here, you can wear my slippers..." he offers. I hear him THUNKing at the fan as I make my way into the smoky hallway, up one flight of stairs to my neighbor's.

There are more fire fighters in the hallway up there. "You have access to the basement now," they laugh, responding to Colin's earlier comment that last week we couldn't let the cable guy into the back yard because Orazzio (the landlord) keeps a stiff padlock on the basement door - the basement being the only way to the back yard.

So far I've accounted for two doors and a window which have fallen under one of those wicked looking axes. They say they're relieved I have keys, because they could hear the little dogs barking, but maybe were also looking forward to busting down something else, I can't really tell behind the masks.

I can already hear the newly broken door to the roof upstairs, swinging in the rain against the building. THUUUUNk. THUUUNk. Thunk - beeeep - someone's CO2 detector is still going off. BAm - BAM- BAm go the dripping hot men's boots on the hollow wooden stairs. Voices ring in the hallway. Acrid, oily smoke. Jessica's chijuajuas must be freaking out.

But they merely seem happy to see me, as I run around opening windows with one hand and calling Kristina, owner of the dog downstairs, with the other. These tiny dogs seem puzzled, but they're all right. Stuart is far more frail than the last time I saw him, but I know it is because he has conjestive heart failure and nothing to do with the current crisis. His ribs shift too easily and his heart is beating fast and a little irregularly when I pick him up for a closer inspection, but I hold him and talk in what I hope are soothing tones between cell phone calls, and ultimately he seems like his old self.

I don't have a key to Kristina's apartment, so she grabs a car and speeds home from work. Her dog, although younger, is considerably less delicate than the chijuajuas, so we're not too worried about him, but it seems advisable to get him some Carbon with two Oxygens instead of one, somehow. Hank, all spring and cluelessness, jumps eagerly at my face as Kristina hands me a set of spare keys. In case of next time.

Which we didn't expect tonight.

Post-script: The boiler man arrived, (landlord called me to let him in - why? because none of the buzzers are working...) he broke the lock to the basement, (second time today) says the boiler is badly maintained and we should call the department of Buildings. Whatever that is.

Then he told me where the emergency shut-off switch is.

"See ya," he says. "Good luck!"