6am something is moving around up stairs

[Johnny Dangerr]

Wow! Your house took me back. Is that cedar shake siding?

Yes. The 2X4s are oak. House was built in 1949...

[Drycreek3189]

Yes. The 2X4s are oak. House was built in 1949...

I was two !

[Johnny Dangerr]

Garage walls and eves are ship lap oak...

[Hogmauler]

Wow. My folks home was built in 1950 in Spring Branch, the po side. I was on the side of the house playing with my army men when I decided to crash and burn one of the jeeps. It had rained and there was standing water in the flower bed beside the house.
I went in the garage and got a can of gas and dumped it on the plastic keep. Unbeknownst to me a lot of the gas ran into the flower bed.
I went into the house and snuck some matches out and lit the keep. Woods! The water caught on fire. Now you can imagine my dismay that water was burning. I grabbed a water hose and hit the gas fire with it. Wrong move. It splashed all over the cedar shake and they went up like a match.
I ran inside screaming that the house was on fire. This was in the early sixties so there was no 911. My mom screamed at her friend to call the fire department. We both ran outside
And when she saw that the side of the house was on fire she passed smooth out.
They came and extinguished the flames. The cedar shake was toast. My dad came home from work at Cameron Iron Works. First rattle outta the box my mom said “Jack! I want you to take that boy and beat the hail outta him”! He looked at me and said “ Bull moose, why in the hail do you do stuff like this”? He was in as much trouble as I was.
He never whipped me and I never played with matches again. We paid $14,000.00 dollars for that home and my dad was making a little over $4.00 an hour. No wonder my mom passed out.

[RifleBowPistol]

I shot an intruder in the house once. Got woke up in the middle of the night, by a loud crash in the kitchen, jumped up grabbed my 10mm and my million candle power spot light. I was going to have the advantage in that situation. Someone breaks into my house, I make up the rules of the game from that point on.
I snuck into the living room, then to the kitchen, got low, because the house was an old farm house with lots of tall windows. So I figured if there was anyone in the house, I could silhouette them. So I would know where they are before they knew I was there. I did not find anyone that way. There was a short hallway from the living room to the kitchen. The crash definitely came from the kitchen. So I started working that way, then heard some more fairly loud noises, like someone was digging through stuff in the kitchen. Being on a large ranch with the closest neighbor about a mile away, it's quiet, so most any noise, you hear clearly.

So knowing for sure the intruder was still in the kitchen, I got the spotlight and the pistol ready and then made my way towards the kitchen. Got there, kicked on the spot light, nothing. I swept left, then back right, nothing. There is a large closet on the left, coming from the living room. So there is a corner, with a wall about 3 1/2' to 4' long, that leads to the kitchen door. Since I did not hear anyone go out the kitchen door and across the front porch, most likely the guy had to be hiding around that corner, to the left. So things were about to be up close, and very fast. So step to the right and forward, then look around the corner, and nothing. I then realize someone could hide on the other side of the refrigerator, so I turn back to the right, and from around the refrigerator comes a 30 lb. coon, then he saw me and took off back around the other side of the refrigerator. I almost shot him with the 10mm, but decided that would be a bad idea. So I went and got my Sheridan Blue Streak, loaded it, pumped it up and went back to the kitchen for round two. The coon jumped on the kitchen counter and took off running, then about the time I got the sights on it, it was running across the stove. I shot it, it fell off the other end of the stove. Then started kicking and banging around between the stove and the wall. By the time it died, you would have thought I shot a person in the kitchen, with the amount of blood in the kitchen, on the walls, the stove and the floor. It was a mess, that took a while to clean up.

[Leverhunter]

Recently had covid so been sleeping in the back bedroom. I new we had squirrels but I didn't know they hit the roof over that bedroom at sunrise several days a week. When they jump from the tree onto the roof and start running it sounds like an invasion. Wife wondered why I was out in the yard at 6:45am pretty much nekid with a 45.