BEEEP. BEEEP. BEEEP. The familiar sound of a smoke detector that has run out of batteries. By now most of the smoke detectors in our house had their batteries removed. We always forgot to buy replacement batteries whenever we went shopping. One of my very first worries is where our lovely brown dog, Kota, was. You see, she has always had a fear of loud noises, The Fourth of July, bad storms, and the most prevalent one at the moment, A smoke alarm that’s out of batteries, always made her go nuts. 
I walked out of my room slowly wondering if I was really hearing that beeping or if it was just in my head. And there it was again, definitely not just in my head. Now to find that smoke alarm. I stood at the top of the stairs and listened for where the beeping was. This was a well-practiced routine for me. However, by the time I got to the stairs there already was a ladder under the smoke alarm right under the stairs. I gave my sister a hand climbing up the ladder to go take the battery out of the smoke alarm and thought that was that and started going back up the stairs to my room. 
“Wesley, Amber come give me a hand!” my mom said bursting in the front door. 
“Why?” I started running out the front door to help “What happened?” 
As I stepped out of the front door I quickly realized what happened. I almost burst out laughing at the scene. Our dog Kota had managed to wedge herself under the front gate leading into our backyard and gotten herself stuck.  
 “Now how in the world has she managed to do that!” I exclaimed while thinking of how to best get Kota out. 
My sister replied while trying to lift the gate off of Kota “I think she tried to get away from the noise of the smoke alarm. Be ready to grab Kota incase she tries to run once we get her free.”  
I positioned myself right next to Kota. With one hand grasping her collar worried she might dart away and the other hand trying to raise the gate. After a few minutes of worry, amazement, and effort we managed to get Kota out from under the gate and back into the house. Still chuckling to myself about the whole situation I went back up into my room to continue whatever I was doing, believing that my worries about Kota were over. Oh how wrong I was.  
Up the stairs my mom called “Wesley, do you see Kota anywhere up there?” 
“Let me go look” I walked out of my room to go look around upstairs. 
The first place I checked was my parent’s bedroom. Whenever she wasn’t downstairs she was often in there. So I walked In to my parent’s bedroom and walked around their bed to be sure Kota wasn’t on the other side where I couldn’t see her. Oddly I didn’t see Kota anywhere in there however I didn’t fret much as I knew a few other places she might be. I walked out and down the hall to my sister’s room taking a quick glance at the loft just in case. Walking into the site of my second guess I still didn’t see Kota on top of the piles of clothes strewn about my sister’s room. This got me a bit worried.  
“Kota!” I called out trying to find her “Come here girl!” 
After waiting a few seconds, I replied to my mom “I don’t see her anywhere up here.”  
Running down the stairs it was clear with a glance Kota wasn’t downstairs either. Now I was starting to panic.  
My first thought was that maybe Kota was back outside and we locked her out. I slipped on my sandals and walked out the back yard calling Kota’s name. I checked her favorite spot, a small hole she dug along the right side of the house she would lay in. I even checked the little offshoot where the AC unit was on the left side of the house that I hated going in because of how much it was overgrown with thick weeds. Kota was nowhere to be seen.  
“I don’t see her anywhere outside” I said as I walked back into the house. 
Me and my mom reached the same conclusion based on the earlier events. Kota must have ran off. Me and my mom both ran to hop inside her van with me stopping only shortly to grab a slice of cheese (One of if not Kota’s favorite snack). Inside her van we slowly drove around the block with one door open calling out Kota’s name and getting strange looks from our neighbors. After having no luck and not seeing any sign of her in the cul-de-sac we went onto the road just outside our neighborhood to repeat the same thing excluding the strange looks. After about 15 minutes of this routine, we were starting to lose hope and called my grandma to come help.  
After my grandma arrived, we went back to the house to meet her and realized that even if we did see Kota we wouldn’t be able to get her back because we forgot to grab her leash. We all agreed to have me stay back at the house as one of Kota’s other least favorite things was on the way, rain. I believed if it started raining Kota would run home to get out of it as she does on our walks. While my mom and grandma left to keep looking I stayed in our backyard calling Kota’s name for about 5 minutes before realizing much wouldn’t come of it. So I went back inside to think of new ideas for where Kota could be. Suddenly, I heard an odd noise from the garage. I went over and slowly opened the door 
“Hello?” I called. 
There the noise was again coming from the opposite side of my sister’s jeep. Creeped out I slowly walked to the other side to investigate. And what would I find but Kota! She was hiding in our garage the entire time and it took a bit of effort to coax her out but after I did, I called my mom and let her know the good news. We all had a good chuckle at the oddity of the situation