Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Too Close For Comfort

Saturday morning we went to the pool. We stayed a little less than two hours and then came home to put the little girls down for their naps. When I opened the front door upon our arrival home, I was hit by a strange smell. In truth, the smell itself wasn't as strange as the fact that we were smelling it in our home. It smelled like sweet meat on the grill, like mesquite barbecue chicken or something. Michael initially agreed that the smell was like some food on the grill, but then he proclaimed, "It's wood. Something's burning!"

I didn't know if I should run upstairs or down. I quickly raced thought through my actions of the morning; I hadn't used an iron or curing iron--or even hair dryer (I was headed for the pool, for Pete's sakes). Then I thought of Mason's toad's heat lamp and ran upstairs to his room.

There it was. The heat lamp was sitting on top of Mason's dresser, not above Fireball's cage. It was smoking! I picked it up and saw the damage:


Apparently, before we went to the pool, Mason had Fireball out for his sisters to take turns holding her. They made sure to tell us that they had all washed their hands thoroughly after holding the toad. Fabulous! Too bad no one remembered to put the heat lamp back above the cage and not on the wood dresser! We could have lost our house, but at least our kids had clean hands...

Needless to say, since Fireball doesn't even seem to like going under the heat lamp (we've never seen her hang out on that side of her habitat) we took away the blasted thing.

I'm just glad we didn't stay at the pool any longer! I don't even like to think about losing things like baby mementos and photographs and whatnot. That would soooo not have been good.

17 comments:

Christie said...

Woha, look at that ash in the center! SCARY So glad that you all are safe and so are your momentos. Poor fireball would have really lived up to his name had you been at that pool much longer (hehe, couldn't resist) Ah, Tender Mercies

whitney allison said...

That's one hot light bulb. Glad your house didn't burn, as I'm sure your neighbors who share a wall are too.

Anonymous said...

Wow... that was close! Glad everything is ok now.

Anonymous said...

How grateful we can be for the spirit for guiding you and Michael to what the "smell" was. I am so glad everything turned out okay!!!

Corinne said...

HOLY COW!!! Truly, a disaster waiting to happen. I remember when I was a kid, a friend of mine left a candle burning in her bedroom once and it burned her entire house down. It was horrible. I am SO HAPPY THAT DID NOT HAPPEN TO YOU@@@

nicole said...

Yikes!
I'm glad you guys got home before there was any other major damage done. Lucky your little toad survived too.

Jann said...

Man, this is scary. I am glad everything turned out good.

Lynette said...

That is sooo scary!!! I'm so glad you found it in time!

Deb said...

this story is so scary. i'm glad it had a happy ending, though.

Cami said...

WHOA! Crazy. A house just feet away from ours burned nearly to the ground just the other day. It's crazy scary! I'm glad you found it in time.

Tracy said...

That would have been bad, because then you would of had to move in with us and that could be stressful, but you are welcome! So glad you didn't spend any longer at the pool working on your gorgeous tanned body!

Jenni said...

How SCARY!! I'm so glad you caught it in time! Whew...

Jared - Christina said...

That is scary! Glad you came home when you did!

Anonymous said...

How scary!! That happened to us when Ty forgot he was cooking eggo waffles in the toaster oven and I didn't know it and we left for the mall. I could smell the smoke from outside before we even opened the front door when we got home.

Jared said...

I just love that the toad's name is fireball.

Jeri said...

I opened this post and thought that was a picture of melanoma! =)
Scary day.

Anonymous said...

Holy crap!! I have looked at that picture twice and just got the time to read the blog. I had no idea what i was looking at before. I thought it was art. Scary!

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