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Last night, around 8:30-9:00 p.m., my dad quietly walked up to my bedroom door, and calmly said, "Rayne. I need you to come look at something. Tell me what you think it is."

Of *course* this set off a million and thirty-two warning bells in my head. From "Oh God, one of the animals has been strung up in a tree by some lunatic neighbor!" to "Oh God, there's a dead body in our driveway!"

You see how my mind works.

Anyway, so I walk into the kitchen, on the verge of a panic attack, and he leads me out onto the back porch.

He points to the wooded land beside our house (which looks more like a field of really tall sticks in the winter), and says "What is that?"

I looked over, half expecting to see something from Nightmare on Elm Street or the X-Files, and I saw this really bright, really orange light.... flickering.

Now, I knew immediately what it was, but my mind was taking it's sweet time processing all of it, as I stood there with my mouth hanging open. This was how my wee brain broke it down in the matter of...oh, about thirty seconds:

The size shows that, according to what we comprehend as being "normal", this thing is supposed to be sitting directly in the middle of the wooded stretch of land, but it's not.

Having drawn that conclusion, we must now infer that it is actually farther away, and therefore, it is a lot larger than we think it is.

And since we can now safely deduce that it is indeed grossly larger than we originally estimated, we must move on to the question of "why?"

It is well after dark and rather chilly, plus, we have already established the size of this thing--which indicates to us that it is NOT being done on purpose!

In other words: This isn't good. This REALLY isn't good!

My exact words when my brain had finished taking it's dear, sweet time:

"Uh..... THAT'S A BIG-ASS FUCKING FIRE!!! Call somebody, QUICK!"

As he did that, I went and woke my mom up. By the time I got back to the porch (which was only a couple of minutes) the entire sky over in that direction was glowing, and the smoke was billowing. Basically, that meant that my mom was seeing something a LOT worse than what I'd seen--so she did what any mother would do.

She freaked the fuck out!

So, there I was... Telling my dad to call stop calling everyone BUT 911, trying to calm my mom down, and wondering if I should be giving myself a crash-course in how to wield a garden hose.

You know, just in case.

The next hour was rather eventful, including such exiting activities as:

1. Standing in the freezing cold, watching the sliver of flickering light through the trees, and keeping an eye on the size of the cloud of smoke, while arguing that it was NOT a house on fire, as there ARE no houses in that direction!

2. Calling everyone that ever said "hello" to me or my family (including distant relations) to tell them all about it.

3. Getting in the car, and driving up the road to do a bit of rubbernecking.

Now, that last thing may seem rather "red-neckish" (and I won't argue with you), but I was really paranoid about the possibility of it spreading.

As we drove by, I was transfixed. The scene was unreal! I live on the thin border between town and farmland. Our neighbor-up-the-road has a couple of acres of land where he stacks bails of hay for his cows. Last time I saw his little collection of hay bails (and these are those really big, round bails, btw--not those little square things you see them lugging around on Little House on The Prairie), it was considerable.

They were ALL blazing. It looked like a cartoon! This huge fire reaching up for the sky, and all these tiny little silhouettes running around it. And there was no water being sprayed on it. As I understand it, if hay spontaneously combusts like that (and we've all concluded that that must be the case, as it's too far off the road for an errant cigarette to have caught it, and hay-burning conspiracy theories are rare--if they even exist, in which case, if they do, someone has WAY too much time and paranoia on their hands!), all you can do is watch it closely and let it burn, as adding water may make it worse.

And this morning, it was still smoldering. I haven't been back by there since last night, so I don't know the extent of the damage.

But my guess is, other than a really big scorch mark on the ground, dude is out of a lot of hay.

In other news, I've been seeing all of the really great discounts offered when you pre-order the fifth Harry Potter book. I had almost made up my mind to give in and pre-order it today.

Then I got an e-mail from Columbia House DVD club saying that I could now pre-order the CoS DVD.

ACK! I can only afford to do ONE! That means I have to CHOOSE!!!

*whine* I can't take the pressure!

*whimpers, curls up in a little ball, and sucks her thumb*

Yeah, I can pretend to be She-Ra when I think I might have to save our house/land from a run-away fire, but just *try* to make me choose when it comes to Harry Potter.

I totally punk out.

<< - >>

Save The Rayne! - 2004-12-27
Want some popcorn? - 2004-06-23
- - 2004-06-19
Pfft. - 2004-06-12
Wheehaa!! Going to see PoA! - 2004-06-02

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