The ᐰmazing Critter Man 🇺🇸🐍🔫

OH! Yearly reminder! Change your smoke detector batteries. Every year is an absolute minimum. Smoke detectors are wear-and-replace items. They don't last forever, no matter how faithfully you've changed the batteries or how enthusiastically they've screamed at you for burning toast. Most smoke detectors need to be replaced every 10 years. Check your manufacturer's instructions, but if you don't know how old yours are, 10 years is a good rule of thumb. And that's 10 years from the date of manufacture, not when you installed them. There's usually a date printed on the back. The sensors degrade over time, and eventually that little plastic hockey puck on your ceiling may be doing little more than providing a false sense of security. So go check yours. Replace the old ones. Dying in a house fire because you trusted a $30 piece of plastic from 2004 is a really stupid way to go. Another big warning sign? If your smoke detector keeps chirping despite having a perfectly good battery, or starts going off for no apparent reason, it may be telling you it's reached the end of its useful life. That's a GREAT time to check the age of ALL your smoke detectors. If they were installed together and one is dying of old age, the others probably aren't far behind. Replace the whole aging batch. And for all my black listeners out there? They make smoke detectrors with ~10 year batteries in them. *BEEP*