Mystery

Yesterday I heard a faint, high-pitched sound that seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

 It was too soft to be from a smoke alarm, and every time I moved under one of the alarms the sound seemed to be coming from another direction. 

I followed it around the house, but always heard it coming from somewhere other than where I was standing.

It was driving me crazy!

I asked a neighbor with mechanical skills to come in and help me find it, but he was hard of hearing and couldn’t hear it at all.

The sound continued for several hours.

Finally I decided to sit down and read, hoping that would distract me from the frustrating sound. My dog jumped up onto my lap and the mystery was solved!

The sound was coming from the collar she wears to keep her from barking. Normally it emits a sound only dogs can hear if she barks, but the slightly lower sound is to let me know the battery is low.

I removed the battery and replaced it with a new one and the sound was gone.

Whew! What a relief!

The Mystery of the Haunted Toilet

One of the toilets in my house seemed to be haunted.

Once in a while, sometimes several times in a week and other times not for a month or two, it would flush itself when nobody had been near it.

The other day I talked to a plumber and learned the problem was called "ghost flushing." It happens to other toilets and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks it seems spooky.

What actually happens is a tiny bit of water leaks out of the tank over a period of hours or days until the water level gets low enough so the mechanism opens and allows new water to refill the tank.

That's what causes the flushing sound.

Okay, the mystery is solved. 

However, as a writer,  I like the original concept better. I can think of all sorts of story possibilities about a haunted toilet.

The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen

I couldn't resist sharing about this book for middle grade kids by M. T. Anderson. It's a take-off on the traditional mystery series for kids written long ago and had me giggling. While some young readers might not get those references, the story is still a lot of fun and the mystery is hard to figure out.

The kids in the book are all heroes and heroines of (fictitious) series of their own, and stay true to character. The situations they get into would be terrifying, if they weren't so funny. The plot is tangled and the book is definitely a page turner.

The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen was published in 2006 but reading it might encourage kids to check their local libraries for mysteries published decades ago. This book is a fun read for all ages.