Last Updated on: 3rd April 2015, 10:02 am
A while ago, I mentioned the infamous incident with a room-mate and a talking watch, and I said that I had to tell that story at some point. I feel like telling it today.
I believe it was a spring day, and we were all doing stuff to do with school or cleaning the house. Nothing special was going on. I heard our room-mate idly strumming his guitar, and decided to go talk to him. We were talking about random things when he stopped me, and in his little Irish accent said “Maan, Caarin, I think I have an aanimal in my room.” This was not a ridiculous thought, since squirrels used to jump from a tree branch to our building’s wall, scale the wall, chew through our screen and land in our sink from time to time until the super cut the tree branch they were using as their jumping off point. I asked him why he thought something was in his room. He said “Every so often, I hear this little squeaking. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Maan, I don’t know what to do.” I stood there a while trying to be as quiet as I could be. Sure enough, I heard a small “squeak squeak!” I stayed a while longer, even got Steve to come in and listen, but could never locate the sound. We decided we’d better call the super for help.
When we told him we thought there was a small animal or bird in our room-mate’s room, boy did he come in a hurry. He walked in and we thanked him for helping us find this animal. His response was, “Oh, if I find it, I’ll stomp the piss out of it!” He didnt’ waste time with the stomping either. He started moving things with speed and vigor, I guess hoping the little thing would scurry. Suddenly, he stopped and said “Ah, there is something in here! I see feathers!” Then the fury increased, until…squeak squeak! In a flash, he said “your gym bag!” He turned on it, and oh my did it ever get shaken about. After the room had been semi-torn apart, there was no bird to be found. He told us to call back if we got closer to finding the little thing, and left.
As the afternoon wore on, the squeaks changed their tone. They started to become longer, more drawn-out, and more tortured-sounding. We were really worried about this poor little thing until Steve said to our room-mate, “Uh, dude, do you have a talking watch that’s got a low battery?” Our room-mate thought for a second and said “Oh maan, I do!” he walked over to his gym bag, pulled it out and pressed the button…and…we’d found our bird! It’s funny how dying talking watches will just make random noises as they make their final progression towards battery death.
God did we ever laugh that day. then we got to wondering where the feathers had come from. We eventually figured out that all the pounding and stomping had caused them to come out of our room-mate’s pillow! all mysteries were solved.
After we had finished laughing at ourselves, we called our super and told him we’d found the bird, and it wasn’t a bird after all. I think he thought we were a little crazy, but he was relieved.
so the moral of the story is if you think there’s a creature loose in your room and you have a talking watch, check and see if the watch is dying before you freak out your super.
