Last night my husband and I were watching TV. Suddenly, through the venetian blind, we could see flashing lights. Peeking out, we saw a fire truck across the street at our neighbor's house, plus an ambulance. A couple of firemen were dragging a hose up the street. Other firemen were going in and out the front door, which was propped open. This neighbor rents out rooms to several people. One of them came out front with two little dogs on leashes. We couldn't make sense of of anything we were seeing. Was there a fire or not?
After a half an hour, the fire truck and ambulance shut off their flashing lights and pulled away. I immediately phoned our neighbor.
"Oh," she said, "My bad. I set a candle on my wood-burning stove and it melted. The wax ran down the back of the stove and got into the grate. We couldn't reach it, and it just smoked and smoked. We thought it was going to set the house on fire, but it didn't, and we're all OK."
