Tia Graves Fisher lives in Iowa County, Wis.

On Nov. 8, I posted a photograph of myself on Facebook, captioned "67th vote cast at Wyoming Town Hall," my "I voted" sticker barely visible. I got 15 likes. From the quiet of my remote home, Facebook provided me with trusted, reliable social connectivity. Or so I thought.

Over the past few weeks, I have learned how rural Wisconsin swing voters — voters like me — were microtargeted by Russian bots via Facebook advertising. Could I have been one of the victims? If so, how did some troll halfway around the world in St. Petersburg track me down?

Often, nothing more than random twists of fate explain how the innocent fall prey to criminal wrongdoing. Could that damn raccoon that tried to break into my house that spring have landed me in the bull's-eye of a Russian operative?

My husband wasn't home the night of this attempted break-in, which I caught on camera. Our dog Ginger, old, deaf and arthritic, was no longer a reliable guard. A few nights later, a raccoon got into my 86-year-old mother's house, just a few minutes' walk through the woods from mine. It left paw prints on her freezer and food wrappers across her kitchen floor. My mother slept through the feast.

That afternoon — worried about further incursions and the potential for rabies exposure — I drove to a gun store in Richland Center and bought a semiautomatic .22- ­caliber rifle. In just a matter of days, I went from raccoon photographer to registered gun owner.

On June 7, I posted the photo of that rascal raccoon with the caption, "Caught red handed trying to break in." I got 13 likes. Some months later, I got a fundraising call on my unlisted landline from a pro-gun group — had my name gotten on some database of gun owners? — conducting a political survey on the Second Amendment. Then, sometime that fall, I started getting the bad "news" about Hillary Clinton.

I recall reading online "news" reports that she was in terrible health. She allegedly had secret brain surgery by some doctor who later mysteriously died. That's what the story said. Another touted a "whistle blower" who disclosed that Clinton had Parkinson's disease. Another "news" report alleged she hid a colostomy bag underneath the long tunics she regularly wore on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was all over it, bringing up Clinton's health with regularity. I wondered why CNN and other outlets weren't reporting these stories. After hunting around, I was able to determine that the stories were false, of course, but they nonetheless served as a reminder of Clinton's bout with pneumonia and that she nearly collapsed getting into a car at an event. The false stories reminded me of the true ones.

Today, now that the election fog has lifted, I vaguely recall reading other nefarious "news." (Regrettably, I now find it necessary to use quotation marks around this word.) Though I clearly remember these "news" stories, I can't really attest to their source or where I saw them. I can't remember which I saw on my Facebook feed — which I increasingly relied on for my "news" — and which I saw elsewhere.

If I had been more attentive, would I have been more discerning? During the 2016 campaign, I considered myself a sophisticated media consumer. I had my smart, analytic brain in full gear and my TV remote ready to mute the political commercials, taking note of whether a PAC or candidate's campaign paid the bill. But on Facebook, my emotional brain was engaged. I read about my family's and friends' lives; I celebrated births and mourned deaths; I took those silly quizzes and hit the "like" button when the mood struck — all the while apparently scrolling entirely clueless through Russian efforts to influence my vote.

In 2015, after decades of living in Los Angeles County, I moved home to rural Wisconsin. Despite my career, first as a prosecutor and later as a judge, I had never owned a firearm. By mid-2016, living in wooded seclusion, up a half-mile gravel driveway with the nearest town of over 1,400 some three miles away, I figured it was time to protect myself. The only risks on my radar were raccoon burglars, not microtargeting Russian bots and Facebook. Godspeed, Mr. Mueller.