[Christien]

I thought we had someone in our house one night a couple years ago. I heard a clang of metal on tile, then a bit more clanging, as if someone was tripped up in it. Turns out it was just the cat knocking over an aluminum-handle broom that I'd left out, then tripping on it a bit when he scared himself and ran off. But to compound the fear in my wife's heart, because I actually thought someone was in there, I went out to the staircase and yelled something like "what the hell's going on down there!" (like that would scare an intruder off!) but I had a really bad cold and my voice was quite a bit off, and my wife thought it was the voice of an intruder!

To make matters worse, just a night or 2 after that we heard a regular metal clank coming up the stairs, like someone with too much crap on their belt. Turns out the dog had been lying on a heat vent and her collar had become tangled in it, and she pulled it out of the floor, and it was banging off the railing as she came upstairs for help!

What a week that was.