It had been a stressful week. Potential threats from some pretty skanky characters. But, my wife was off (work) and we were parked in front of the TV eating dinner.It was cold outside and I had started a fire in the wood stove. All of a sudden,
Boom!
I’ve been around and used a lot of firearms in my life and what I heard was a .45 caliber pistol discharge! Angie hit the floor and I was up out of my recliner running to the bedroom turning off lights. I grabbed 2 weapons, a high intensity flashlight and headed for the porch.
We live in the country. Over the years, we’ve had occasions that a careless hunter would fire at a deer or something and not realize the trajectory of the bullet was in line with our house. But, it wasn’t hunting season and was after dark. So not a hunter’s stray bullet.
It, then, dawned on me that I hadn’t heard glass break. So, likely not someone shooting at us through a window.
The sound was as loud as if it was fired in our living room. But there was nobody, except me and the wife, present.
You see, when I start a fire, I put down tender. Usually crumpled up paper. Then I put in some cardboard on top of that. Like a pre-kindling. On top of that goes the thin dry sticks of wood, kindling, and last goes a few medium sized logs. Then I light the tender which lights the kindling which lights the logs.
Everyone feeling kinda Boy Scout / Girls Scout ish? Let me bust that bubble.
What you don’t do is set the butane BIC lighter on top of the stove, get distracted and forget it!
See, the plastic lighter never melted. The butane just heated up to it’s autoignition point of 761’ F. And well, kaboom. We confirmed this by sweeping up little bits of the lighter parts, finished dinner and watched a movie.
From your embarrassed, grumpy Uncle Dave.