I live in Texas. This is a wonderful state for so many reasons, but my favorite reason is that we have been given the privilege of defending ourselves by carrying a concealed weapon. But even if you are for some reason unable to qualify for that license, you always have the right to protect your homestead. Some states call it the Castle Doctrine and, since I live in a suburb of a major city that's overrun with criminals (many of whom are armed or illegals), I've taken many steps to ensure my own safety.
I've grown up in the gun culture. I was inundated with gun safety classes and principles as long as I can remember. I got my first rifle before I could ride a bike. My father was such a stickler for safety that, even now as an adult, I'm still sometimes uncomfortable picking up another person's gun to look at it or shoot it - even with their permission. I keep every one of my guns locked up in a gun safe (2 pantry-sized, bolted to the floor, with combo and key locks) unless I'm home. Then, I always have a shotgun and handgun nearby. That idea started from living in extremely bad neighborhoods most of my life. Later, it was to protect myself from a crazy estranged husband. In fact, I even supplemented that paranoia by getting a security system, but I still arm myself even when it's set. Last night is a very good reason for why I do that...
The Boy is gone on a hog hunting trip. It's a boy's deal, so I wasn't invited. Ehh, whatever. I really dislike hogs, anyway. So I spent the evening cleaning my house from top to bottom. I was cranking the satellite radio on the TV and sweating up a storm. What an exciting life I lead, right? A Friday night with my boyfriend out of town and I'm at home, with a fucking dustpan in my hand. Slow down, Stillie...you're living too fast. But I digress. (i do that a lot, don't i?)
I'd set the alarm when I'd quit running in and out of the house, taking trash to the can. I usually bypass the door I use to let the dogs out, so that I don't wake up at 3am, let them out, and then run across the house like a fool, trying to disarm the alarm before it goes off. But I always have it armed when I'm in for good, regardless.
At about 11:30, I decided to go upstairs to take a shower and wash my hair (we're trying to remodel the master bath, so i'm stuck in the guest bath until that's completed). There were some other personal needs I needed to attend to, so I filled the tub with about 4" of water and climbed in. Then, I had this weird thought that I needed to grab the house phone instead of just my cell, and that I should take the pistol with me too. So I went back downstairs and got those. When I returned upstairs, I shut the bathroom door for some reason, and set to the task of tidying up myself.
I was about 10 minutes into it when I heard my boy Aussie barking ferociously - over the music, over the vent - and it rattled me a little. He barks at people only, and it's usually just a 'hey, get off my lawn' kind of bark. This was something I'd only heard from him three times before: once when he attacked my cousin's boyfriend and then once when he knocked me down to get to the satellite installer - and once a few hours before when The Boy came back into the house with a cap on. So I immediately thought someone was either at the door (my doorbell is temperamental), or something was going down.
The Boy's friend drove here and they took Boy's truck to the ranch, so the friend's truck is parked on the street just outside of my house. It's a truck that has a rather high incidence of being stolen, so that was my first thought...that someone was out there trying to get in the truck or that someone was just outside antagonizing Boy Dog. With a hat on. He really seems to hate people with hats.
And that's when the house alarm went off.
I immediately jumped out of the tub and wrapped up in a towel. Then I locked the door and dialed the police first and racked the slide on the .40 Glock next. I could still hear Boy Dog barking, even over the alarm, which really kind of freaked me out even more. But the phone kept ringing and ringing, and the police department never picked up. WTF?! I knew I could call the sheriff, but I didn't have the number programmed in my phone.
Why didn't I just call 9-1-1, you ask? Because, in my head, 9-1-1 is for life or death situations where you can't handle things on your own (as right or as wrong as that may be), and I knew that I could handle my situation. I just wanted some backup, pretty damned quickly! LOL! So, at that point, I had it in my head that I was on my own, and it was up to me to defend myself.
Here's the thing: There was no way anyone could not know I was home. I had several lights on inside and the radio was on. If anyone had been watching for any time at all, they would have seen the upstairs light go on, too. If someone is willing to break into a house when they know for a fact someone is home, they're typically not there just for the electronics and jewelry. I was honestly pretty fucking scared that they were there to do physical and emotional damage to me - if they even stayed in the house after the alarm went off.
So, after I resigned to the fact that I was alone on this one, I opened the bathroom door and looked down the stairs - straight to the fishing rod rack where I keep the shotgun leaned while I'm home. It was still there, which meant if there was someone inside the house, they weren't going to shoot me with my own shotgun at least. If it hadn't been there, I probably would have either climbed out an upstairs window and hung out on the roof, or just barricaded myself in the bathroom and called 9-1-1 from the landline, so they'd have the address for sure, in case something happened to me.
My girl Aussie had run up the stairs and was looking for me, but I could still hear Boy Dog near the front of the house, barking intermittently. I took that as a positive sign, because if someone had left the door open, Boy Dog would have followed them right out. So, there I was, like a horror movie, a blond woman cautiously walking around my house in nothing but a towel, with a half-shaved cooch because I got interrupted, and a cell phone in one hand and a Glock in the other. When I'd cleared the downstairs, I turned off the alarm and checked the code. It was a glass break sensor in the kitchen that had been tripped.
I did a quick scan of the kitchen and everything looked intact, so I went into the bedroom and got dressed. I was still waiting on ADT to call. It sure did seem like a long time. When I checked my phone, it HAD been a long time! If I'm waiting on ADT to call me and, if that failed, to call the cops, then something was going terribly awry.
So, I dragged out the phone book and looked up my county sheriff's number. I called them and they contacted my city police and said they'd send someone over.
Do you see now how there were a series of bizarre coincidences that could have left me high and dry and possibly dead?
I called The Boy to see if ADT had called him first, since he's listed on the immediate contact list. He was freaked out, of course, but said nobody had called him at all. Then he got really, really mad, because we've had problem after problem with ADT since this whole thing started. We thought that it was all sorted out, but apparently not. I told him I'd handle everything and he needed to go back to sleep.
The cops showed up within 2 minutes of my hanging up with the sheriff's office (which is now programmed into my phone, btw). I explained what had happened, and said that I'd just feel better if they made a few extra patrols down my street. He said he'd check the bayou behind my house, just in case, and he said he had no idea why the city police number wasn't working. He said that if no one is at dispatch, they have to manually forward it to the county, and that someone must have forgotten to do that. Niiice.
I went outside this morning and there are some smooshed places in the flower beds in front of my kitchen windows. I'm not saying that someone was going to break in, but that's what it looks like to me. I believe that it was a combination of the dog and the alarm that deterred them (i can't believe all my outside lights, alarm signs, and 'beware of dog' signs didn't do it in the first place). I'm not saying, either, that I would have been viciously raped and murdered if I someone had gotten in and then stayed in the house, but I always assume the worst - and prepare for it.
In my mind, I was calm, and fully prepared to kill whoever it was that had illegally entered my home. I would hate to have to take another person's life, but if they were still determined after all the warnings, there's no way I'm going to say, "Hey, you! Get out of my house!" Fuck. No. Muthafukka's gonna die. I've taken many classes and trainings and I've fully thought through every possible scenario of a home invasion. I had no idea which situation I was being put into, but I was ready for it. I'm extremely proud of myself for the way I handled it. I even chose to take the Glock upstairs with me instead of my .45 Combat Commander because I remember thinking, "If anything happens and I have to take someone's life with this gun, the cops are going to take it as evidence until I've been no-billed, and I don't want them to have one of my collector-type pistols. (Expensive guns have, historically, had a way of disappearing from our county's evidence room)" I mean, this isn't a knee-jerk reaction kind of blind fear and panic situation, here.
Honestly, I didn't even get truly unnerved until after it was all over, the cops were gone, the phone calls were all made, and I trying to decide about whether or not to get back in the tub and finish what I was doing, and wash my hair and everything. And I didn't sleep worth a shit...every little sound woke me up, but I didn't want to turn on the white noise generator because I needed to hear if something happened. Rationally, I know there's little chance an intruder would return to a place he'd been run off from, but try telling my scared little girl irrational part!
The moral of this story is this: You may have an excellent police force. But what if you can't get them? What if your phone dies on you (like mine did right there at the end) or what if your criminal cuts your lines? You may have a fancy alarm system, but what if there's some weird electronic fluke and the monitoring company never even registers that the alarm tripped, so they don't call you or the cops? If they don't know, the cops will never know. Even worse that than, what if you just forget to set it altogether?! What about your entry settings? Do you have it set for a 60-second entry delay? That gives a criminal a full minute to get deep into your home before the alarm actually activates. What if you happen to become a victim of someone who is crazy enough or deaf enough or just determined enough to not give a flying fuck about that loud alarm and enters your house anyway? Do you have what it takes to protect yourself and your family?
People have fire drills all the time. Emergency management agencies do dry runs of all types of emergency situations. Families are told to practice fire drills and 'safe meeting point' runs. Families are reminded to always have a backup plan because the first one may not work. No one ever tells you to practice what to do in case you're caught by surprise by a home invader or something like that. I feel incredibly lucky that I not only got to practice this, but that it was indeed only a practice and that I didn't have to assert my rights as a homeowner with the second amendment backing my ass up. I have no problem with killing someone if they invade my home, but I'd really rather never have to do it...
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