The Mast-Head: Hear It for Leo

To be fair, Leo the pig did not actually try to burn down the house. I was not there at the time, but the evidence suggests that it was an unintentional act born of utter need.

The way I heard it, the kids were home with Rita Barnard, who looks after them when their mom and I are at work, and their cousins, Nettie and Teddy. Somebody went to the kitchen for a snack and noticed a sharp smell coming from the downstairs bedroom. Rita and our middle child, Evvy, opened the door to find the room filled with smoke. The nearest detector, the one that goes off even when we so much as cook a pancake, was silent.

Rushing to the far side of the room, Rita saw a lamp cord sizzling and sparking under a dresser, where it had been plugged into an extension cord. Leo, somehow been trapped in the room earlier, had apparently retreated to a far corner and let fly. A pool of urine gathered on the floor causing a short between the lamp cord prongs.

By coincidence, a village safety inspector had been around the Star office a couple of weeks before and pointed out that several extension cords we had in daily use were prohibited for more than occasional use by the state building code. Eager to comply, I removed them that day, though at the time I was not sure why exactly they were of concern.

Arriving home to a house smelling of pig pee, smoke, and melted plastic, I began to understand.

One of the two brass prongs on the cord had melted clean off. The wire insulation was blackened and misshapen by the heat. I realized that we had had, in effect, an open electrical connection — where the lamp plug met the extension cord — exposed on the floor. Other issues with extension cords, as I understand them, include excessive loads and wear that can lead to fires.

Leo, to his porcine credit, pointed out a risk we had ignored, and that we had a smoke detector in need of replacement with a more sensitive model. That — and he needs to be let out more often.