When I was a child, I would listen with earnest to hear if my bowl of Rice Krispies would snap, crackle, and pop as the TV commercial claimed. As an adult, I’m still curious about usual sounds, and I find the stories associated with some of them amusing. For example, my cousin, Vanessa, told me about an interesting event a couple of days ago.
She said that her daughter, Destiny, removed a few raw eggs from the refrigerator and was preparing to boil them for breakfast when the eggs began making a chirping sound loud enough to be heard throughout the room. They both freaked out.
I’ve never heard chirping from previously refrigerated eggs like I told Vanessa, but hardly anything surprises me anymore. I had no reason to doubt her, so I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for a dramatic finish to the story. I thought – if Vanessa tells me that they covered the eggs with a warm towel and within minutes little chicks hatched from them, I’ll tell her to video the chicks and contact CNN immediately. But alas, no such drama happened.
Her resourceful daughter consulted the ultimate practical problem solver, Google. It turns out that it is not uncommon for raw eggs to chirp when there is air escaping from them.
Still, that didn’t stop me from imagining what might have happened if those eggs had hatched. Although I wasn’t there with them, we all would have been jumping up and down and pulling out our hair as if we’d entered the Twilight Zone. That vision cracked me up. Pun intended.
News crews would be scrambling to get to their home, and after being assured that mother and daughter did not whisk up a tale, each station would try to be the first to break the story. No yolking. Another pun. (I couldn’t resist.)
I’ve yet to have first-hand experience with chirping eggs. (I don’t want to either.) But I’ve grown used to hearing various unusual sounds in my home. I wish that I could unhear some of them
There is a harmony of intermittent sounds that are unnerving and downright annoying. Most occur in the middle of the night.
I hear hammering on the metal pipes behind the wall and suspect that poltergeists are causing the disturbance. The wind blows the Venetian blinds through the open window and bangs them against the sill, waking me with a start. The random pop of a closed plastic water bottle on the nightstand, a running toilet, or leaky faucet – drip, drip, dripping are all nerve-wracking. But of all the annoying household noises – groans, creaks, buzzing, gurgling, hissing, skittering, and humming there is one exasperating sound that beats the others.
It is the fantasy Gremlins that live inside my pillow. No matter how I punch, turn over, or fold my pillow, I can hear them. Think about the high-pitched squeal heard when an inflated balloon is loosely tied or the lip on a balloon is stretched, allowing the air to escape as the balloon deflates. That’s the sound I hear inside my pillow some nights. No, it isn’t Tinnitus. That’s been ruled out. When the pillow Gremlins get too annoying, I’ll put in earplugs or earbuds and let a book or music on my iPod lull me to sleep. I understand that feathery pillows are the worse noise makers, but mine is a memory pillow. Go figure.
Unexplainable noises are attributable to so many things. For example, I’ve learned that stray electrical signals caused by Smart TVs, electric wall clocks, and other devices can emit a low-frequency constant hum. But I don’t find any of those as interesting as chirping eggs.
So much for the things that scramble our nerves in the morning or go bump in the night.