Oh, alright -
One fine summer afternoon my spouse was lying in bed watching TV. As it happens, the part of the driveway we usually park the truck on is just outside the bedroom window. Spouse hears odd/suspicious noises outside, so he peaks through the window blinds.
He sees a rather large gentlemen frackin’ with the driver’s side of our truck.
Now, we don’t own a gun, but I did purchase a target crossbow some years ago for amusement and target practice in the backyard. Seeing as it would work nicely as a distance weapon he takes it down off the wall, loads it, and goes outside.
At some distance from the truck he can see the man by the truck has some sort of metal thing and is definitely trying to jimmy the lock on the door. Spouse has the crossbow in easy view and says “'Scuze me, sir, what are you doing?”
No, I lie. Due to the profrane language I will spoiler it:
HEY MOTHERFUCKER WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO MY TRUCK?
At this point the man turned his head, pulled the metal object out of the truck door, and started to turn and advance on the spouse. The “metal object” was a machete-sized knife about 18 inches long (half meter for you metric types).
My spouse, reasoning that this man did not have his best interests in mind, raised the crossbow, and fired.
A bright red bolt then impacted the wannabe truck thief. Due to the fact the man was in the act of turning while brandishing his [del]short sword[/del] knife it hit him in the right side of his right butt-cheek.
At this point Mr. Truck Thief decides the gimpy guy with the bad limp and messed up leg may yet be a threat and takes off running. Obviously, the bolt didn’t hit anything vital. Heck, it’s a target point, designed mostly for straw targets. Still must have stung pretty damn bad, as it seemed to have gone through his overcoat and gotten stuck in flesh.
Well, Mr. Thief dropped the knife on his way to elsewhere.
The cops showed up. Upon hearing a crossbow was involved they asked where the body was. We explained no, it wasn’t a hunting bow/bolt, the guy ran off with no more than a few drops of blood left behind. He was quite lively. They said oh, last time they’d dealt with a crossbow shooting the target had been mostly cut in two (I’ve seen crossbow bolts intended for bear - they look like a 2x4 with a Klingon-designed garden trowel on the end - it was probably something like that)
The spouse had not touched either knife or truck so the cops took the knife as evidence and dusted the truck for prints. There was the usual “we’re not your friends” questions and answer session for the spouse. He stayed calm, stuck to the facts, and gave the best description he could of the guy. The cops did inspect the crossbow thoroughly, asked if we had any other weapons, and reminded us about the relevant crossbow laws in our state. They did not confiscate the weapon. No one got arrested or handcuffed, but like I said, the questioning wasn’t the most fun, even if the cops weren’t being particularly belligerent.
Afterwards, it was determined that our truck thief was a guy linked to other vehicle thefts in the area, some of which had ended in the vehicle owners winding up in the hospital for weeks due to getting sliced up.
The cops thanked the spouse for his description and said they’d check the local emergency rooms for gentlemen sporting bright red arrows protruding from an asscheek.
Of course, a pint of liquor, a pair of pliers, and a friend can take care of that sort of thing. It’s not like it was a barbed point. Although it was probably best to have our side of the story in first. That way, when the guys shows up in the ER yelleing about the crazy cracker who shot him the authorities can say something like “Well, if you weren’t trying to steal his truck and threatening to skewer him maybe he wouldn’t have shot you.” This, from our side, is better than the cops showing up at our house wanting to know why we did a mega-scale involuntary body-piercing on this poor man in the ER, right?
The cops never did catch him. About 14 months later the thief was found in an alley in Gary, Indiana. The evidence seemed to indicate he had lost an argument with a shotgun, and perhaps other firearms had been involved as well. Nothing to do with us. Og knows if they ever found out who killed him, because there was a long, long list of people who might have had some motive. He was a bad, bad boy.
The flaming pitch incident… well, my building has a flat-top roof. Last summer the landlord and I were making repairs on it. (Really, it needs a new roof but the landlord doesn’t have the funds to replace the roof so he keeps patching it). Things were humming a long pretty well. One odd thing about flat-top tar roofs, though - tar is flammable. But you use a torch to melt the tar and make it adhere. The trick, of course, is not to set anything on fire. The landlord has been doing roof repairs for something like 30 years, he’s a licensed general contractor, the guy knows what he’s doing, right?
I don’t know what made me turn around while fixing the skylight, but I did - to see a geyser of flame shooting out of one of the recent patches. I screamed “FIRE! THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!” There followed many, many frantic moments involving running around looking for buckets of water. getting a fire extinguisher, running into the apartment yelling for the spouse to wake up and start filling buckets of water, the spouse (keep in my, he’s got spinal damage and doesn’t even walk so good) running from the sink to the base of the ladder (and falling flat more than once), me running 5 gallon buckets up and down the ladder, the landlord blasting the fire with fire extinguisher and water, and finally doing his Incredible Hulk impersonation and using his hands to rip burning boards and roof bits off the building and through them out in the parking area. Meanwhile, melted tar (a.k.a. "burning pitch) is dripping from the roof down the walls and through the decorative (and wooden) mansard. Oh, and when the landlord flung burning boards off the roof some of them had dripping tar, too.
We got it out before the fire department showed up. As it happened, someone had a car accident at the local intersection while all the excitement was going on, so the fire department wound up taking care of that.
We still have one patch of tar stuck to the sidewalk on the south side of the building, and there’s one spot I haven’t gotten off the car but it’s really small. That afteroon there were little molten tar puddles sort of all over the parking area and driveway.
The landlord still owes me a fire extinguisher. We used the one I normally keep in the kitchen. The kind that is suitable for all types of fires. Nice to know it worked that well.
I used to fly airplanes for excitement. Now I do roof repairs. Have to say, flying is more fun, though.