Abby and I thought we heard a knock at the door. Three taps, not too loud. But we were in for the night, and here in the country we certainly never have company unannounced at eight at night. We supposed it could have been Dorothy with a recipe for thanksgiving, but actually we didn’t expect anyone.

I got up, but instead of going straight to the door, I first got my Ruger P95, which is a high-capacity 9mm pistol. With the weapon hidden behind my back, I carefully opened the front door to find no one. Odd, we both felt. I carefully stepped out onto the porch and scanmed around with the tactical flashlight on my pistol, and saw nothing.

We then heard a similar noise from a less-distinct direction, so I checked the garage. While I was out there, Abby and I both heard more shots that seemed closer. I came back into the house to see Abby with her Walther PK380, holding it with her finger indexed and and muzzle up, ready to shoot.

Man, she’s cool.

After listening for a few more minutes, we decided the shots were coming from the east. We had no idea why someone would be shooting multiple rounds in the nighttime, except that maybe they were shooting at coyotes. I don’t like to shoot at coyotes at all, since I read once that if you miss, you educate them, and they are that much harder to kill if you need to later. The only shot I would take would be if they were threatening the dogs or the goat.

That was Wednesday night. As I write this, we are recovering from Thanksgiving, but not in the good “turkey coma” way. I woke up Thursday morning with blinding abdominal cramps. As the morning progressed, I became increasingly nauseous. By 10 am, Abby asked me to get out of bed, so I did and got in the shower, after which I laid down on the bathroom floor (what curative powers does a cold, unsanitary bathroom floor have?), and made a conscious effort not to vomit. Abby brought me a dose of promethazine, a gel you smear on your wrists to suppress nausea (when I was a kid, all they had for that were suppositories.) Although I was successful at not blarfing, it was clear at that point that Thanksgiving was canceled, or at least postponed until the weekend.

So today, although I feel better, I an gingerly testing the waters of solid food. So far I have only had coffee, as I don’t want to set off a firestorm of nausea all over again. I believe I will try some toast after a bit, and if I really am better, maybe plan to cook my Tofurky© tomorrow.

What lessons did we learn from all this?

• If you show up at our house late at night, you better announce yourself loud and clear. Otherwise we might bust a cap in your ass. This probably applies to visiting anyone who lives in the country.
• We don’t shoot coyotes except as a last resort.
• Promethazine is a miracle drug.
• Thanksgiving can be postponed.