One can only imagine what is going on now in the mind of Shirley Allen. Already paranoid and delusional, she has been surrounded for the last 38 days by a posse of Illinois State Police and other law enforcers. They have fired tear gas into her house, ringed it with ultrasensitive listening devices, driven over her lawn in all-terrain vehicles and tried to send a dog in to flush her out.

Now, admittedly, Allen didn't communicate her sentiment in the wisest way. When sheriff's police showed up at her house in Downstate Roby on Sept. 22--they were serving a court order for her to be psychologically evaluated at a hospital--she greeted them with a shotgun.