Trapped

Today's question is, did you ever realize that life is giving us little warnings that we sometimes - far too often - ignore?

Like when we don't bother to wear our "life vest," thereby endangering our life.

Like when we know very well that the front steps are icy, but we run out to get the newspaper anyway.

Like when we use the word "booby trap" and forget that someone is going to wind up being the booby.

Here's the story, and for once, it doesn't start with "A Florida man..."

A Maine man is dead now because he cleverly set up a device that would shoot the next daggone person who entered his house.


And then he turned out to be the next daggone person who entered the house.

The man was named Ronald Cyr, and he made it to 65 before the final mistake of those 65 years.  It was Thanksgiving, last week, when he went home, opened the door, and the booby trap worked.  Shot, he called the Van Buren Police Department and told them he was shot. They responded and found him inside the house (pictured) and rushed him to a hospital, where he succumbed to his self-inflicted wound.

The cops also found other jury-rigged devices around the house.  They had to call in the Maine Bomb Squad to clear the house out.

The official cause of death was listed as being hit by an "unintentional discharge of one of his homemade devices," the police department said.

I'm not looking to make sport of the man's death, and I cannot state with certainty that one could call Francis Street in Van Buren, Maine, a crime-ridden hellhole, but this is one of those little warnings to all that sometimes, the enemy is us.