often get people off the river who would capsize and then come looking for a phone for assistance. Sometimes this was very late at night. I could stand on my front porch naked and no one would see me, that's how secluded it was.

One late night I hear someone is on the porch. Our only air conditioning was a single unit in our master bedroom window, so in the summer all the windows of the house were open (except the master bedroom). I then hear the noise that sounds like someone is cutting through the screens at the back door. I yell out asking who it is. No one answers, but I continue to hear the screen slashing noise. I am totally freaked out and grab my shotgun and the one shell I have for it.

I'm inching down the stairs from the master bedroom holding the gun tight in my hands and ready to blow the assailant away because he must be a bad dude because he wouldn't respond to my beckoning calls. I just remember how terrified I felt.

Just then my teenage daughter yells from the other side of the house that it's just our black lab that they had forgotten to let in before they went to bed. She was running her claws down the screen trying to get our attention for us to let her in.