godzuki

So I'm clicking away in my upstairs office as usual yesterday afternoon, when i notice a really loud crackling sound coming from my next-door neighbor's backyard. When I look out my window, i see a bunch of smoke coming from behind her house. My first thought was, "What the hell is Pat cooking?" (Pat being my 70-year-old grandmotherly neighbor, if your grandmother could swear like a sailor and could beat you in indian wrestling). After a moment, it dawned on me that perhaps something was burning back there, like maybe her house. I decide I'll feel really bad if her house is on fire and all I did was stare stupidly out my window trying to figure out whether it was actually on fire or not. I ran downstairs and out the back door to find a tall recycling bin shooting orange flames 10 feet into the air, scorching the side of the house. Holy crap! I grab a shovel and leap over the fence to pull it away from the house just as Pat comes out, panics, runs back inside to grab a kettle of water and throws it on the fire. This seems to have angered it, as the flames burst another five feet skyward. I yell to call 911 (as I'm not sure if the back of the house has caught fire yet) and pull the melting bin over with my shovel. I run back to my house, grab the garden hose and keep the fire down until the firefighters come. When they do, I'm there presiding over a molten, smoking, rather unimpressive pile of rubbish, which is certainly unworthy of the three fire engines that responded. Luckily, it turns out Pat's house has asbestos shingles and was only blackened, and other than the steaming heap of bin, nothing is harmed. I'm torn between feeling lucky that Pat's house was okay, and feeling like a twit that we called 911 for a burning pile of garbage.