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When one moves into a new home it is always a good idea to get to know your local law enforcement personnel; however, this may not be the appropriate way of doing so. I need to inform any visual people, who are embarking upon the reading of this tale, to please forgive the images that will, no doubt, be conjured up in one's mind, as it is just a part of the story, and could not be omitted; thus, read at your own risk. So now I shall begin the tale . . .

The moon shown brightly, gleaming thru all of the tall trees on the side of the hill where our new house sits. For those who may not know, I closed on a home in Wildwood, MO on February 12th and have stayed there many nights under the watchful eye of my wife, but had never stayed out there by myself, that is until last night. Another part of the tale is that we got our Burglar Alarm activated yesterday, and I had been thru the time-consuming required 3-week course for Burglar Alarm Operations 101 in the mere 5 minutes that the technician felt that it would take to dispel all of the intricacies of the operation of the alarm system. To verify that I had retained the alarm system information, I decided to set the alarm for "Stay," which disables all internal motion detectors, but keeps all doors armed. The alarm chirped the signal that I interpreted as "OK, you are now safe and secure in your new home."

About 10:30 pm, after finishing getting one of my machines set up in my basement office, and configuring it for DSL, I decided "Hmmm . . . I think I'll pour me a glass of Merlot, go up to the master bath, and sit in the Jacuzzi' tub and relax a bit." This thought was the focus of what happened for about the next 45 minutes of this tale.

The wine was Barefoot', a California Merlot, and was full bodied, with a tart finish, as I reached for the hot water faucet on the Jacuzzi' tub. The water began its 4-hour quest to fill the large tub with enough hot water to float a battleship, as I have approximately the same body mass as a Battleship. As the water ran into the tub, the steam began fogging up the mirrors and putting moisture in the air. As I began getting ready to get into the tub I noticed a light switch on the bedroom wall that I had not noticed before . . . this led to a brief bout of Light Switch investigation.

With tinting on the bedroom windows, and the bedroom light on, I couldn't see that the flicking of the switch was lighting up the back yard with ten 54,000 Kilowatt flood lights that would cause severe burns if you stood too close to them. So after about 5 minutes of turning the back of my house into a disco light show, with the rapid clicking of the switch, I turned the bedroom light off, and flicked the switch on again, and finally saw that the back of the house was being illuminated by these "Midnight Sun" spotlights. "Cool," I thought to myself, as I made my way over to the window to see what I could see out the bedroom window.

I don't know what it is with deer and me, but the spotlights illuminated a small herd of deer feasting in my backyard on my new prize Begonias. Thus, I thought to myself, "Self, why don't we have a little fun with the deer." So I turned off the hot water, as the tub was sufficiently full of water, and I opened the bathroom door that walks out onto the 2nd floor balcony. The calm, peaceful, moonlit night was shattered by the blaring of the burglar alarm siren that my door opening had set off. In the brief moment that I looked into the back yard before spinning to deactivate the alarm, the deer were running like a screaming banshee Indian was coming after them with a meat cleaver; no doubt, the siren from the alarm system sounded like a Mac truck blaring down the hillside warning the deer "I'm going to get you. . . ." Needless to say, the poor shocked deer probably didn't stop running until they had reached the Tennessee border.

I reached the Alarm panel in the bedroom in a mere 15 seconds and had silenced the alarm. I gazed out into the back yard that had recently been filled with deer, and noticed that house lights were coming on all over the hill and down in the valley too. Remembering what the Alarm Technician had said "If you trigger your alarm, and cancel it within 30 seconds, they will know it is a false alarm and nothing else will have to be done," I disabled the alarm and flipped the Jacuzzi' tub on.

The sound of the Jacuzzi' jets made enough noise where a deaf man could hear it, kind of like a 737 on takeoff roll, but in a bubbly sort of way. I grabbed my wine glass, and settled into the bubbling froth to begin my relaxation phase. I rolled up a towel, and made a make-shift pillow, and sat there . . . the busy day was ending well . . . or so I thought.

The sound of the tub jets successfully drowned out the sound of the phone ringing downstairs. I took another sip of wine "This tub is pretty cool," I thought. Just like the phone downstairs, the jets covered up the sound of my cell phone ringing . . . which was the second phone number on the Alarm Monitoring Service's "Call In The Event Of An Alarm" list. The next call I wouldn't have been able to hear any way, as it was to my wife's cell phone. After about 25 minutes in the tub and the wine being finished, I get out of the tub and flip the Jets off.

An interesting way to find out what your doorbell sounds like is to have it ring at 10:50pm-ish, when you are alone, in a new house, not expecting visitors, standing there, dripping wet, with nothing but a towel (sorry visual people). First, let me explain that my doorbell sounds no less than what one would think that London's famous "Big Ben" clock tower would sound like, at probably the same decibel level as well. Second, I have had experience with people ringing my doorbell before at late hours, and them running away, but that is another story. Needless to say, my doorbell was ringing.

I attempt to wrap the towel around myself and found that it reached, but did not have ample enough material left to fasten it around my waist, thus, my left hand was rendered useless as its prime objective was to keep the towel around my midsection. I went over to the bed, and retrieved my .38 Cal revolver, and placed it into my right hand in the event it was some mal-contents at the door. My concern was that the house had sat vacant for several months prior to us moving in, and I didn't want burglars to be coming thru the door, so I felt the need for the gun.

As I descended down the stairs, I noted an exceptional amount of light coming thru the front windows. I figured that I had left the bright outside lights on and continued. As I rounded the staircase and headed for the door, I saw in the driveway the source of light. It was either a specially light equipped police cruiser, or I was about to have a close encounter of the third kind, as it looked no less than a space ship with it's beams illuminating my house like a Broadway Stage. In the event it was a police cruiser, I decided to lose the gun, and slipped it under a pillow on one of the chairs in the living room.

In my towel, I cracked the door open and hollered out "Hello!" There was no answer, so I flung the front door open, and stepped out on the front porch into the Broadway lighting and proclaimed "Hello!" once again. My mind took a mental snapshot of the absurd scene for posterity, the way I recall it, I seemed like a Happy Buddha holding a washcloth around his midsection on a Broadway stage, still glistening from bath water (sorry again visual people).

"Sir, this is the Saint Louis County Sheriff's Department, I need you to stand there and keep your hands where I can see them," exclaimed the deputy from his car.

"Can you see my hand that is holding the towel, as I would hate to be charged with Gross Public Lewdness," I asked.

He said that it would be OK for me to keep my hand on the towel.

"I need to see some identification," he commanded.

"I have to go upstairs and get it," I replied.

"What is your name," he asked.

"Chip Caraway," I replied.

"You are not who we show as being the owner of this house," he stated.

"We just bought it on February 12th," I said as I ascended the stairs to retrieve my ID.

After showing him the ID, he said that my Burglar Alarm was going off; I told him that I had cancelled it. He advised me to call my monitoring company and give them my password. I did so and found that to really inactivate it, you have to enter your code twice . . . Hhmm, imagine that . . . I must have missed that chapter in the speed course in Alarm Operations I had received that day. If the other days in the house are as interesting as this, I won't know how to act; thus, meeting your local law enforcement personnel is good, but not in this manner.