Monday, April 28, 2008

Apples and firecrackers don't mix

One early spring Sunday morning (I mean it was early in spring, not that early on Sunday) I was coming home from a walk. As I got closer to my house I noticed some smoke rising behind it. I thought, wow, that's nice. My husband has picked up the trash that has collected over the winter and is burning it in the fire pit behind our house. We have a woods directly behind our house which was one of the whole reasons I wanted to buy it in the first place. I love having that little bit of wilderness in the middle of the city. So, upon arriving home I thought I would go check out his progress.

I jogged around back to give him a pat on the back for his efforts. What to my amazement . . . he wasn't back there at all. There was no fire in the fire pit. Just a huge blazing brush fire burning in our back yard. I glanced to the outside faucet but our hose had been put away in the garage for the season. Next I tore into the house to alert my husband about the ordeal. He happened to be in the shower. While he was frantically getting dressed, I got the hose out of the garage and ran to the back with it. With shaking hands and after what seemed to be an eternity I some how managed to get it hooked up to the faucet in the back. T. took over and started spraying the hose. By arcing it as much as he could he was barely able to reach the farthest part of the fire. In his haste, he hadn't bothered to put his shoes on and as he was fighting the fire he would come upon hot coals and start doing a really cool dance!

Thank goodness he was able to contain the fire and we did not have to call 911. Also, thank goodness that most of the neighbors were at church when all of this was going on and upon their return to the neighborhood hopefully they just thought someone was having a huge barbeque!

So, what do you supposed caused all of this excitement? Oh, did I forget to mention, that my son K. had been out on our deck the day before experimenting with firecrackers and apples? And throwing them into the woods and blowing them up? Yeah, just take that has a friendly child rearing hint. Apples and firecrackers don't mix.

3 comments:

Mamacita Chilena said...

yet another pyro story involving my brother that I didn't know about...why does none of this surprise me?

Ritamae said...

I think you must have been studying abroad at the time!

Rachel said...

My sister "accidentally" caught a can of gasoline on fire....it only burned (at first) in the nozzle so she panicked, thinking it might blow, and decided to throw it. gas flew out all over the grass and a huge patch was on fire...I don't remember how she ended up putting everything out (we were home alone at the time) but she did...and oh man did she ever get in trouble when my parents got home. I ratted her out right away, of course!!