No smoking!

What starts out as a simple story of self-defense in the home...

A would-be burglar who'd been scared off from one house by a 70-year-old woman found himself a few minutes later staring down the wrong end of a shotgun at another, police say.

And before the sun rose Sunday, Joshuah Scott Rutledge probably figured out that this northern Gaston County town wasn't ripe for the picking.

Rutledge, 26, of Oakboro was reportedly climbing through a bathroom window of a woman's home on the 3500 block of N.C. 27 in Stanley at 4:30 a.m. Sunday when the woman, who'd had her 70th birthday the week before, spotted him and scared him away before he could get inside.

He then apparently went to a house across the street off N.C. 27 on Watts Street, this time making it inside.

But once inside he found himself staring at Richard Osborne and an old shotgun that his wife's grandfather had once used to slaughter hogs. Whether the gun would still fire a shot remains in question.

Rutledge had pulled a bedspread down to cover him as he lay in the floor in a guest bedroom, Phyllis Osborne said.

But the couple could see his knuckles poking out.

"We told him, ‘If you don't come out we're going to blow your brains out,'" Phyllis Osborne said Monday. "We had to say it three times, but then he jumped up and said, ‘I'm in the wrong house. I'm in the wrong house.'"

At first Rutledge insisted he'd come to the house looking for a friend. Then he said he was there to meet the Osborne's daughter, whom he claimed to have met on the Internet.

But the Osborne's only daughter lives in Georgia, married to a law enforcement officer.

"I wasn't scared, I was mad," Richard Osborne said. "I was mad because he scared my wife."

The Osbornes have been married 30-plus years. He has a little trouble hearing, she can hear a squirrel walking across the roof.

When she heard something Sunday morning she knew someone had entered their home. Even after a quick lookaround produced nothing, she said she was sure something wasn't right.

Richard Osborne then saw the bedspread pulled down from the bed. Phyllis Osborne keeps an impeccable house.

"I'm very particular," Phyllis Osborne said. "My bed has to be made. Not a wrinkle in it."

Rutledge answered Mrs. Osborne with "Yes, mam," and "No, mam,'" she said.

Mr. Osborne had to punch him once and hit him twice with the gun. One strike with the gun came when Rutledge insisted on lighting up a cigarette while waiting on police to arrive, he said.

Since becoming fatherly, I have noticed that anytime I'm out with my son and come across puffing addicts, the words that come to my mind are something along the lines "freaking smokers" - usually not quite that nice. However, in keeping with my (sometimes) mentality of "facta, non verba", I think I like the idea of a shotgun stock to the side of the coconut.