Firestarter!
I had a dear friend once who had a disturbing and troubling habit: Inadvertently setting fire to homes.

No, really. Her mantel had an enormous charred section where she'd had a candle burn down and melt onto the wood. The melted wax had caught fire, and charred a 6" circle on the oaken slab.

She once managed to set a fire in a bathroom, while in the tub. She never did really explain to us how that happened.

They were always small fires, and we used to joke about the smallish patches of burnt we'd find around her place.

However, one day I saved her home from almost certain destruction.

I lived next door to her, and noticed smoke coming out the back of her house. I also knew that she wasn't home at the time. Breaking in, I found the ENTIRE house completely filled with smoke, and no discernable source of flame.

At the time, she lived with an extremely sweet, incredibly stupid English bulldog named "Boris". The house was so smoky I couldn't see the walls, yet Boris was sitting on the couch, unperturbed, watching me with apparent disinterest. And in case you were thinking, "Oh, well, he was suffering from smoke inhalation!", no, the daft dog wasn't one whit less aware than normal nor one bit lethargic or otherwise showing any ill-effects, he was just too stupid to try and get away. So much for heroic barking or even basic survival instincts, apparently. I heaved Boris out the back door and began to search for the source of the flames, as my eyes watered and I began to choke.

Nothing. Billowing smoke, but no heat, no flames. And it smelled like burning wood, not food or plastic or other material.

After glancing at electrical outlets and making sure there were no obvious sources of open flame, I went into the kitchen. Stove was off. Oven was on.

What was in the oven, dear reader? A chunk of...wood.

Wood. That she'd put in the oven on low heat, to disinfect it so that she could use it in a fish tank. She'd forgotten about it and gone to the store.

I chucked the wood into the sink, opened every window and door in the house, and was waiting for her when she returned home, to explain to her how she'd better buy me a few beers, as I had just saved her home and her dog. I believe that was good for free drinks when we went out for several years.
(herbivorous, Thu 3 Nov 2005, 20:17, Reply)