Iphone – Getting “EXC_BAD_ACCESS” when accessing instance variable from within UITableView delegate method

My iPhone application blows up when it accesses an instance variable from within one of the UITableView delegate methods. I think I'm retaining it so I do not understand why I can't access it without a problem.

Here's my .h file

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import "AlertSummaryCell.h"
#import "AlertDetailViewController.h"

@interface AlertSummaryTableViewController : UITableViewController {
NSDictionary *alerts;
NSString *alertKind;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSDictionary *alerts;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *alertKind;

@end

In my .m, the application dies at the first NSLog call:

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
NSLog(@"AlertSummaryTableViewController.numberOfRowsInSection entered");
NSLog(@"  alerts description = %@", [alerts description]);
// To know how many alert summaries we have, get the value for count out of the input dictionary
int theCount = [[alerts objectForKey:@"count"] intValue];
NSLog(@"  Going to return %d",theCount);
return theCount;
}

What am I missing???

There's no problem at all in the viewDidLoad method:

 - (void)viewDidLoad {
 NSLog(@"AlertSummaryTableViewController.viewDidLoad entered");
 NSLog(@"  alerts description = %@", [alerts description]);

 // We want the View title to include the alert count
 // To know how many alert summaries we have, get the value for count out of the input dictionary
 int theCount = [[alerts objectForKey:@"count"] intValue];

 // Now construct the title text and set our views title to it
 NSString *myTitle = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%@ Alerts (%d)",alertKind,theCount];
 [self setTitle: myTitle];

 // Memory cleanup
 [myTitle release];

 [super viewDidLoad];
 }