The Xmas Alarm

So, yesterday, Christmas Eve 2024, the alarm that had been plaguing me for months went off again. I’m writing this today, on Christmas Day while the events are still fresh in my mind.

You probably know the annoying impact of a car alarm going off in your neighborhood. Again. And again. And again.

Now imagine this at your home which improbably happens to be at the edge of the South Florida Everglades. With no other houses, let alone cars, in view all the way to the horizon. On Christmas Eve day. David and I had just started to play bocce ball.

“I’ll pay you 10 dollars if you can locate the source of this alarm,” I told David. David and I like betting small amounts of money, usually just $5, on little challenges. The bocce game we were playing right then was a 5-dollar bet (which I ended up winning). Earlier in the day, David had won $10 dollars for finding the battery-powered chainsaw which I had misplaced. David always finds the thing I have misplaced. Even when he’s not here at the farm. He’ll say things like, “Have you looked on your table downstairs?” and I’ll usually find the missing item there. The bets usually end up even-steven, with the same few five dollar bills passing back and forth between us.

The alarm kept coming on, howling in a whiny legato, “whyey, whyey, whyey, whyey” for three minutes non-stop. It would stop for a minute, only to begin again for another three minutes. The wind was strong, coming from the North East. It was probably moving a palm frond that kept triggering a motion sensor.

I expected to get a call from my only neighbors here, the Dorces, who live just a mile downwind. Marisa, their watchful matriarch, had called me probably a dozen times over the previous months when she heard the alarm, worried that it was our alarm. “Is this your alarm going on?” she would say. And I would reply, “It’s coming from across the canal. But thank you for calling and caring.” There are some houses across the E101 canal which runs half a mile west of our property. And I always assumed, mistakenly, as yesterday would reveal, that the darn alarm was located there.

Just a day earlier, while David was still in Miami, the alarm had been going off for hours. I decided it was finally time to locate its origin. I drove my car the two miles of dirt road up to Ingraham Highway which leads to the entrance of the Everglades National Park. Turning the windows down, I could hear the alarm howling in the distance.

I turned left and drove a mile or so to where the road crossed the E101 canal. As I stepped out of the car, the alarm had paused for a change. There was a father and his 15-something-year-old son fishing in the canal. I walked up to them saying “Merry Christmas” to signal that I was not with the Agricultural Police and intent on busting them for fishing without a license. I saw them relaxing.

“Have you heard that alarm?” I asked.

“Yes,” the father said.

“Where is it coming from?” I asked. Right at that moment the alarm started again, coming from the south where I had just come from. This confused me since I was expecting the alarm to come from further West, across the canal, or possibly be even from further north, carried down by the wind.

The expedition proved fruitless, which made the prospect of using David’s supernatural locating skills the next day even more appealing. “Let’s bring Zeus along,” David suggested. Zeus is our 14-year-old Belgian German Shepherd mix. He is doing great despite his age, except that his hind legs are getting weaker. David and I lifted Zeus into the back of my Rav4, and all three of us were heading North on the dirt road again leading to Ingraham Highway.

We rolled down the windows to hear the whining alarm that kept going off in the distance. On Ingraham Highway, we pulled over to the South side of the road, and stopped the car. “The alarm is coming from there,” David announced, pointing to back where we had come from. As always, he displayed his confidence in being able to find stuff.

We turned around and went back on the dirt road. There was a fence, obscuring the view onto a large field with several sheds on it. David walked over to a large, sliding gate. “It’s coming from here,” he shouted. “There are some cars there. Somebody is here.”

I started whistling at the top of my lungs using my thumb and middle finger the way I had learned as a child. I’m good at whistling like that. “The gate is open,” David called out. Several dogs began to bark.

I caught up to him at the gate. A man with a slight build was approaching from one of the sheds. To my amazement, David was calmly petting two massive dogs, their muscular builds and broad heads suggesting a mastiff-rottweiler mix. As the man came closer, through the cacophony of the alarm and barking dogs, I could see he was young, smiling, and appeared to be of Southeast Asian descent.

“Man, this is ridiculous,” David growled at the man. “We’re trying to enjoy Christmas Eve, and your alarm keeps going off.” David gestured emphatically. I was nodding vigorously to show my exasperation.

“This is not my place,” the man explained, pointing to another shed maybe 100 yards away that seemed to be the origin of alarm. He watched the dogs nervously, motioning for us to keep our distance.

“Come on, man,” David pressed. “You got to do something about this. Doesn’t this get on your nerves? It’s Christmas, for heaven’s sake. This is not fair to your neighbors,” he added, sweeping his arm toward the surrounding farm fields. Of course, our property was more than a mile south, far out of view.

The man pulled out his cell phone, his demeanor conciliatory. “I’ll call the owner who can help,” he offered with a friendly smile. The owner’s voice crackled through the speaker phone: “What is going on?” The first man spoke into his phone, his words lost in the mixture of barking and alarm sounds. I noticed that one of the three big dogs had slipped out of the gate onto the dirt road.

“Man, the alarm is driving us crazy,” David said into the cell phone.

“If I don’t keep the alarm on, people will rob me,” the voice replied defensively.

That response broke my silence. “I’ve had it,” I shouted. “Let’s call the police. This is ridiculous.” I was losing my cool.

David and I both where shouting  some more, when the man on the speaker phone began to plead, “Please speak more nicely. Please speak more nicely.”

David would later say, correctly, that it was my threat to call the police that threatened to further escalate the situation. But something in the tone of the man on the phone made both of us us catch ourselves.

“What is your name?” I asked the man on the phone.

“Sokhu,” he replied.

“Listen Sokhu, we are your neighbors, and we want you to be safe, just like we want to be safe.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Sokhu responded, his voice softening.

“I often see suspicious people around here who might be scouting for places to steal stuff,” I continued. “If they see that you have an alarm that goes off all the time, they’ll know that nobody takes the alarm seriously. It will make you less safe.”

“That’s true,” Sokhu agreed.

“I want us to be good neighbors for one another who help all of us be safe.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Sokhu repeated. “I will turn the alarm off.”

Suddenly there was silence. Two of the dogs were sniffing David and wagging their tails. The third one had disappeared onto the road. Zeus was sticking his head out of the car window. The man at the gate, who introduced himself as Virak, was smiling. We all exchanged phone numbers. David further calmed the situation by apologizing for both of us for raising our voices. Later that day, Sokhu texted us images and video of criminals burglarizing his property—the reason he had installed the alarm. We exchanged more messages, introducing ourselves properly and sharing Christmas wishes.

The alarm remained silent through Christmas Eve and all of Christmas Day. I sent Sokhu and Virak another text: “Dear Virak and Sokhu, thank you again for being so responsive about the alarm yesterday. The peace and quiet make a big difference. Please let me know if I can ever be helpful to you in any way. I’m glad we are neighbors. Happy holidays to you and all the best, and thank you again.”

What began as a frustrating Christmas Eve turned into an unexpected gift of new connections in our little corner of the Everglades. And true to form, David had once again located what had been missing all along—not just the alarm’s source, but a chance for neighborly understanding.