"Warning: protected by Hi-Tech Armed Response." - sign outside just about every home in Grahamstown

I'm jolted awake by a piercing, shrill sound. Our burglar alarm is in panic mode and loud bursts of sound reverberate through the house.

Dazed, I pick up my cell phone to check the time: 12:35 a.m. It's past midnight; that means that everyone who lives with us is already at home, and anybody who might accidentally set off the alarm, knows the code to shut it off.

With the alarm in panic mode and the piercing noise that accompanies it, I, too, begin to enter panic mode. I get up out of bed and make sure my bedroom door is locked.

It is. Of course, it is. I lock it every night before I go to sleep.

I sit back in bed, afraid to leave the room and dial Jane. She's in the room next to me, no more than 10 feet away, but I'm not willing to open my door, scare anyone who might be outside and have a knife at my neck.

The phone rings.

"Hi Jane," I say, screaming above the alarm. "What's going on?"

"I don't know Jason," Jane replies. "Armed response is coming. You will see their lights on when they start to walk around the house."

I hung up. We both have the same idea. She, like me, is not going to leave the secure cocoon of a locked room.

Sixty seconds go by and the shrill noise suddenly subsides and is replaced by radios and footsteps scurrying around the house. It sounds as if Armed Response has arrived, turned off the alarm, and is now doing a sweep of the house. I'm still not quite sure what I should do.

I hear Jane next door. "Armed response--is that you?"

"Yes mam," comes the reply from the foyer. "We've arrived."

Jane and I both unlock our doors and make our way down the passage. There's a man in an armed response uniform and a flash light standing just in front of the kitchen's interlocking door.

I walk down to him and pass the front door. I glance outside and see two armed response vehicles idling at the gate with three other guards ready to race in if there are problems.

The guard looks at us and says "Your front door was open."

He made his way to the sitting room, moving the flash light around the room and then yanking back the floor to ceiling curtains along the wall.

Nobody. No broken windows. No sign of a robber.

To the dining room. The radio on his belt is still chattering away, the beam of light from his flash light still dancing across the room. Again, he pulls back the curtains.

Nothing.

To the spare room. He throws the door open, stands back, moves in with the flashlight, and checks behind the curtains. Nothing.

"I don't know mam," he says.

Jane suddenly thinks she forgot to close--and lock--the door before going to bed and believes the dogs pushed it open, sending the alarm, and the inhabitants of 31 Bedford Street, into an instant panic.

In America, if I had heard the alarm, I would have most likely went out to see what was happening. Or, I would have called 911 and had the police come.

In South Africa, where there seems to be fewer "rules of engagement" with potentially desperate, deadly criminals, I wait locked in my room for a private security firm to race to my house with guns.