Where would the world be without highly useful, helpful, and thoroughly obnoxious gadgets to beep at us?

Picture a home.  All is peaceful and still (save perhaps the squables of children, but that’s just background noise).  Then the silence is broken–

“Beep!”  We look up, on alert to place the sound.

“Beep!”  The sound bounces in and out of each room.

We start looking.  It’s not the fridge, nor (beep!) the cell phones.  The smoke alarm battery?  Or maybe the (beep!) oven?  The timer?  The (beep!) other timer?

And so it goes.

As likely as not, it was the cordless phone playing hide-and-seek with one of the kids.  But at least the beeping saved us a long and frustrating search, right?