The Bauer Confidential

We’re a book lovin’ family, that’s just the way it is.  Every night we read a short book to Jocelyn (one of those made of stiff cardboard or cloth).  She really enjoys it, but as we have a limited number of these books, it gets a bit tedious for Mom and Dad.  So we decided to get some more books to expand our selections and reduce our boredom.  Yesterday, while shopping at Costco, I found a cool looking cloth book I thought Jocelyn would enjoy.

When we got it home, and started to play with it, Matthew and I noticed something strange.  It’s one of those books where you push a little button and it makes a sound corresponding to the barnyard animal on the page, or at least that’s what it was supposed to do.  Instead, when you pushed the button on the front for the horse, it sounded like turkeys gobbling.

And that wasn’t all, every one of the sounds was wrong, the goats sounded like chickens, the sheep like, well I’m not sure what that sound was supposed to be actually.  Briefly concerned that Jocelyn would grow up confused as to the proper sounds made by animals we pondered returning the book (we had to go back to Costco anyway because they’d forgotten to put one of the items we purchased into our cart).  When activating the battery, I noticed two sets of wires feeding into the battery compartment from the book pages.  I unplugged them and put them back in the opposite orientation to the way I found them.  Sure enough, the horse now “neighs” and the chickens now “cluck.”  Now the only issue is that the buttons are very sensitive and when Jocelyn throws the book around, or plops down on it, the sounds of the barn yard fill our living room.