Serious stuff here

Many of you know that my husband is a volunteer firefighter.  (If you didn't, you do now. lol )

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For years, we lived with a two way radio "bleating" day and night, because the radio acted like a (police) scanner.  We would hear some or all of the air traffic, police department, sheriff's office, Forest Service (three different forests in three different regions), ambulance crews, and some CB traffic and maybe even some that I've forgotten.

Finally, the firefighters were given pagers that would only go off when activated by the dispatcher.  Ah, bliss.  Peace and quiet.

Well, except when the tone goes off in the middle of the night and scares us right up off of the bed. 

Then.  This past winter, my husband's pager died.  The replacement one quit.  Then someone else's pager started acting up; then another and another and another.  The other day, there was a fire call, and the chief didn't show.  The tone never sounded on his pager.  Pager death epidemic.  (Of course, all the pagers weren't supposed to quit working at the same time, so there isn't money in the budget to replace them.)

Soooo, for the past several weeks we have been back to having "radio chirp" all the time.  This time, it is only the sheriff's office's frequency, but now the sheriff's office now handles the dispatching and/or check-ins for most of the county - again, some airport traffic, city police, some state police, sheriff deputies, and personnel from the Department of Corrections,  local highway maintenance crews, ambulances, Forest Service, Fish and Game, Bureau of Land Management, and of course, the fire departments (and whomever else I've forgotten).

The chatter is constant, but is usually kept businesslike or at least official sounding.  Except one deputy.  He almost always does a sing-song "code four".  Unfortunately, it is irritating and just plain silly sounding.

Most of the time, I'm able to actually sleep through the radio noise, but once in a while something grabs my attention.

In the middle of the night, the night before last, for some reason, the radio traffic woke me up.  The dispatcher was doing routine check-ins. 

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The second check-in was the "Deputy Sing-Song".   Coee ddddde foe ur'  The dispatcher got the giggles.  The next deputy got the giggles.  The DOC officer was giggling.  One person who checked in snorted from trying not to laugh.  The State highway patrolman was laughing out loud.  By the time the dispatcher signed off, she was just about couldn't talk for laughing.

And, I'm lying in bed in the middle of the night shaking with hysterical laughter.