Playing with fire

Saturday nights are supposed to exciting right? Well, we had us some excitement that we would have happily done without this past Saturday night.

It was a long weekend here, today is Queen Victoria's birthday, I think, it's called Victoria Day so maybe it's not her birthday, maybe it's just her day. I have no idea, what a good member of the British Empire I am. Wait, is it even still called the British Empire?

Where was I going with that?

Right, it's a long weekend. We spent the weekend at my parents house since we didn't make it up for Mother's Day we celebrated it this weekend. Saturday night found us all (minus my Dad who is at his brother's farm helping out with the seeding) hanging out. My bro and his family were there and we were trying to settle the kids down for the night. All four of them in one room to sleep equals much laughter, squealing and then the obligatory "BE QUIET!" from the adults.

Mom, with her superior olfactory senses had been smelling smoke for awhile. Dad is on the volunteer fire dept for their rural area but since he was out of town, no word came in.

Then a neighbor called. Mom stepped outside to see a huge plume of smoke to the west (maybe, I am so good with directions it could have been east – when I was standing in front of their house it was to the right of the house, does that help?).

There was indeed a fire. Trevor (my illustrious brother) and Mom went for a quick drive to check it out. The fire? On the back 40 of an acreage three down from ours. This is the red glow that could be seen from the riding ring adjacent to the house:

Photo courtesy of Jay

We deemed it close enough that we should leave the house, just in case.

Want to see some kids shake? Tell them there is a fire close to Grams and Pop’s house. We discovered that works quite nicely.

We loaded everyone up including Kricket the dog and Jessie the cat and headed to wait at the Fire Hall for word it was under control.

We got home around 11:30 and put the kids down. In the meantime both Jay and Trevor headed out to see if they could yeild some shovels and help out.

By the time they both were home it was 2 am.

Good times, good times.

Thankfully the only harm done was to some of the beautiful natural bush out back of the house on that acreage. Who knows how it started but the idea of human help is very likely since it's spring and not really ideal natural fire conditions.

Here are some pictures of the scene the next morning. It was still smoldering in many spots though it is hard to make it out in the pictures. And the stench? Let me tell you, not pleasant.

On the walk over to the scene, these dainty, tiny little flowers were growing on the path. The Prairie fauna is delicate and hardy. It's breathtaking if you take the time to appreciate it.

Hopefully I can use this as a nice reminder to my children that fire in any form is never to be underestimated.