For a moment, I thought you’d grabbed a stuffed toy beaker, not Beaker. I wondered, does she only have a beaker or does she have a whole plush lab set? How do you make a velveteen Bunsen burner? I would totally have grabbed the beaker or Beaker, so’s to keep them safe from the bad guys.
There’s nothing in my bedroom that’s handy for smacking an intruder. I suppose I could get a shoe with a stiletto heel out of the closet. No-- they all have suede or nubuck on them and blood stains would never come out, so that’s not an option. That reduces me to spritzing him with hairspray from the master bath. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll be wearing contacts, so it’ll really sting.
Hmmm. I might yank my alarm clock out of the wall and try to brain the intruder with that. It’s about the only thing of substance within arm’s reach.
And I tell you what, if I’m awoken from the dead of sleep by an intruder, I’m DEFINITELY sleeping in the next morning! Won’t need that pesky alarm to wake me up early, no sir!
I also know where in the house to find a bayonette (sp?), a blowgun, a hatchet, a sledgemaul, two 38 caliber pistols, a compound bow, a fighting/hunting knife, and a four foot long steel pole.
We have a shepherd mix dog who can pretend to be intimidating if you don’t know her. She will bark convincingly at the mailman and anyone who dares come to the front door, anyway. She will also go crazy for any strange animal who may step foot into the yard. I felt sure that if an actual intruder were to break in she would, at the very least, bark and warn us and possibly scare off intruder, right?
A few weeks ago I was just about to drift off to sleep when I heard a ‘click.’ The distinct sound of the doorknob latch. A long pause. I strain to hear, I just about convinced myself it was nothing, then, ‘creeeeeek.’ the plain sound of the back door being pushed open, so slowly. I am speechless with fear, but manage to pat my husband, who is sleeping. “I just heard the back door open!”
Husband: Wha…huh?
Me: * I just heard the back door open!*
Husband stumbles sleepily, staggering out the bedroom toward the door, I am ready to leap out and grab the baby in an adrenaline fueled cat-like ready state of awareness and flee the house.
A moment passes…nothing.
I creep out of the room and peek around the corner. I see husband sleepily closing the door. “What happened?”
Husband: The doorknob was locked but the latch didn’t catch. The wind blew it open.
I go back to bed, relieved but heart still pounding. Only to see the dog, awake now but silent, lounging on the bed with her head perked up as if to say, ‘what are you all doing? I am trying to sleep!’
When I lived alone I used to sleep with my tennis racquet under the bed. Those little gridlines would sure be hard to conceal if I wacked you in the face, thief!!
And one time a loud noise woke me up (never did find out what it was), I was scared frozen in my bed for the longest time, then finally got the courage to venture past my bedroom door to find out what was going on…with a can of aerosol deodorant in my hand to spray in the burgular’s face :smack:
My fencing coach told me a similar story (it might even be true), except that it actually involved burglars.
He knew a guy who practiced Japanese fencing, and who had a real, sharp katana in his apartment. One night he was awakened by the sound of a couple of guys rumaging around his apartment. So he got up, grabbed his katana, and started to go out to confront them. Then he realized he was naked, and figured “it would be rude to confront them naked.” So he put socks on. Yes, socks.
He then walked into the living rooms, naked but for a pair of socks and wielding a katana. The two (unarmed) intruders stared at him for a moment. One of them retreated immediately. One of them apparently briefly thought that he liked his odds, and stepped toward the guy. On further reflection, however, he decided to retreat as well.
The guy with the katana stabbed him in the ass on the way out.
The settlement would be all those Little Tykes Cosy Coupe Cars that are nuclear proof (and other assorted Little Tykes plastic housing structures) and required by law for every parent to have at least one for their child.
I read of another similar incident several years back when I was living in Milwaukee. A student at UWM (Univ of WI Milwaukee) was leaving his fencing class one evening when he saw a mugger grab a woman’s purse and run off with it. The fencing student ran the mugger and held him at sword-point until the cops showed up.
Here is a home defense story about my uncle’s friend:
He woke up one night to sounds of someone prowling around in the house, so he gets up and grabs this doo-dad he keeps near the bed. The doo-dad is some sort of metal hinge or sliding mechanism that used to be a part of a window or something (I don’t remember the specifics.) So my uncle’s friend steps out into the dark living room and shouts in as intimidating a voice as he can, “who the fuck is there?” (or something to that effect) and “cocks” the metal doo-dad, which makes a sound convincingly similar to a pump shotgun being pumped. He heard some panicked running and in a few seconds the burglar was out of the house.
That always struck me as a clever alternative to keeping a real gun in the house.
I have a Celtic war sword next to my bed. I don’t think it’s actually battle-ready, but it’d probably make a burglar bleed if I stuck him with it. A few weeks ago, I heard a noise, and after realizing that both my cats were asleep at my feet I got up and grabbed the sword, then crept out into the hall.
It was at that moment that I realized I was a single woman investigating a strange noise in my underwear, and that by all laws of nature, I had to die.
Or maybe the window was open and the blinds were smacking against it in the breeze.
Couple months ago, my wife woke me up, saying that she heard a strange nois,e and sent me to investigate. I reached behind my dresser where the baseball bat is kept, and crept out to the living room. No intruders, of course.
As come back to bed and replace the bat, I notice how light it is. I squint. Whiffle bat? When the hell did we get a whiffle bat? Only then do I realize my wife is snickering under the covers.
Oh, she’s gonna git it. Mess with my big bad man-stick, will ya?
OK, now I have this mental image of a half-naked Draelin walking around carrying a big ol’ sword. I like this thread.
Personally, I have a couple of swords, too, and plenty of knives (plus a shilleileigh, a traditional Irish walking stick which is emphatically not a weapon, and of course it’s pure coincidence that the big heavy knob at the end is perfect for whacking English bastards upside the head), but if I were ever threatened in my apartment and had the presence of mind to think about it, I’d grab my garden hoe. I’m trained a bit in quarterstaff, but not in any other weapon, and the extra reach would be nice, too.
My brother has a Japanese katana, we have a full complement of kitchen knives, and I have a wicked-looked stuffed moose and a ferocious tiger sitting on the shelf in my room. Fear us, baby.
