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The white drapes dangled from a single hook in Bill Hyde's living room Wednesday, nearly pulled down by an intruder the night before.

"It was a harrowing experience, I'll tell you," the 85-year-old said, using the tip of his cane to switch on a light and show the destruction.

About 8 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Hyde and his wife were watching a movie in the back den of their home on Windomere Avenue in Kessler Park, where they have lived for 36 years.

All of a sudden, something rattled and shook in the living room near the front door.

Mr. Hyde grabbed his pistol and phoned 911. "Somebody's breaking in," he said. As the operator questioned him, Mr. Hyde could still hear the noises. He stayed by his wife.

The operator kept asking him if he saw the intruder, Mr. Hyde said. "I didn't see him, but it sounded like he was coming."

A Dallas police dispatcher alerted officers to a signal 41-11, a burglary in progress with a firearm involved. Officers flipped on their lights and sirens and arrived within minutes.

They fanned out around the house, guns drawn. The operator told Mr. Hyde to put his pistol down. He did so and ventured to the front door, noticing something furry whisk by him along the way.

Mr. Hyde opened the door, and it wasn't long before the officers, in the words of a police report, "determined the suspect was a raccoon."

But there was drama still to come.

The officers set two dining room chairs in the front yard for Mr. Hyde and his wife. Then they began trying "to cordon off the suspect in the back bedroom," the police report says.

The raccoon tore through the house, ripping up the Venetian blinds in the front bedroom and pulling down drapes in the den. It knocked over a lamp in the back bedroom and toppled a flower pot in the utility room.

As the officers shooed the invader toward the rear of the home, Officer Daniel Ek, 25, a three-year Dallas police veteran, tried to open a door to let it out.

"While unlocking the back door, the suspect ran at Officer Ek," the police report says.

With the raccoon only three feet from him, Officer Ek fired his Taser. The stun gun's prongs struck the raccoon in the back, and Officer Ek held the trigger for several seconds to deliver the voltage.

But the raccoon kept running, past Officer Ek and back toward the front of the house. Finally, it darted into the living room fireplace and up the chimney, apparently where it had first entered the house.

Officers borrowed Mr. Hyde's ladder to climb to the roof and shine a flashlight into the chimney. The raccoon was still inside. An animal control officer tried to flush it out with ammonia but could not, Mr. Hyde said.

A neighbor piled two pieces of wood and a coffee table against the fireplace, to keep its accordion-style door from being pushed open again. When the neighbor returned Wednesday morning to put a cap on the chimney, the raccoon was gone.

"He got away clean," Mr. Hyde said.

The Annoyed Man wrote:I heard the burglars never took their masks off, so the homeowner was unable to ID them.

seamusTX wrote:This one is too good not to post in its entirety.

As the officers shooed the invader toward the rear of the home, Officer Daniel Ek, 25, a three-year Dallas police veteran, tried to open a door to let it out.

"While unlocking the back door, the suspect ran at Officer Ek," the police report says.

With the raccoon only three feet from him, Officer Ek fired his Taser. The stun gun's prongs struck the raccoon in the back, and Officer Ek held the trigger for several seconds to deliver the voltage.

But the raccoon kept running, past Officer Ek and back toward the front of the house. Finally, it darted into the living room fireplace and up the chimney, apparently where it had first entered the house.

The suspect? Is the raccoon going to sue the DMN for libel?

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- Jim