My cousin, threw a smoke bomb, at a skunk. I always knew that having redneck relatives wasn’t my biggest accomplishment, but this wasn’t just laughable misconduct, but complete family embarrassment! Not just because of the smoke bomb (heaven knows why he had that) but because he lit his house on fire doing it; and not only that, but tried to tell the firefighters it was a cigarette – that’s right, a cigarette – instead of the truth. Now understand, Billy is a 19 year old kid that is living with his grandmother and, instead of admitting that he created his own, homemade smoke bomb from sugar and potassium nitrate, tried to cover it up with a lie and one that Meema would have beaten and kicked him out of the house for.
The firefighters found the truth fairly quickly, with or without the convincing lie there was still a shell from the smoke bomb under the house. As Elvis said, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” More than luckily for my grandma (and Bill) the fire was very small. If someone hadn’t called the police when they saw all the smoke coming out from the house, who knows what would have happened. After all the emergency vehicles had cleared the scene, my grandma gave Billy the scare of a lifetime. As I recall she said something to the point of, ‘if something like this happens one more time, you won’t have to pack your things ‘cause I’ll bury them with ya in the woods!’, and ‘boy you’ll wish the skunk had crawled up inta yer drawers the next time you get a bright idea’ (with a lot more cursing and yelling).
Thankfully no one was hurt and the house was intact. Apparently grandma had the occasional skunk that likes to crawl under the house with her cats and he’s scarred them off with a smoke bomb in the past, but this one was just stronger than the last. He wasn’t exactly sure how it started a fire but we assume that the dried, old stuffing from some of her cats old toys were to blame. Either way no skunks have been sighted, we have a fabulous Holiday story (once grandma kicks the bucket), the house is in one – slightly crispy – piece, and Billy has retired from the smoke bomb industry (or so we hope).