Hey Forest Folk - Did You Know Stink Bugs Can Light Your House On Fire?

About a week ago, I walked into my room and smelled the faint aroma of electricity and fire.

It wasn't enough for me to think: The house is about to catch fire. It was just a little smell. I went to our internet modem and found my pillow had fallen on it, and assumed that the modem was hot, and that was the source of the smell.

I put the pillow back onto the bed and went about my business, and I guess, became noseblind to it as I crawled into bed. The next evening, at midnight, when I finally dragged myself to the room to go to bed, the smell hit me again.

Except this time, it was a sharp scent, and my alarm bells went off.

My son was asleep in the room, in his crib, so first I began sniffing like a dog around his bed, seeing if the smell was coming from there. It wasn't. Like a hound on the hunt, I sniffed my way all around the room, to my husband's work desk where his computer is set up and he's got an extensive array of electrical cables.

Not finding it still, I sniffed the air again, following the scent further to my bed. I dove to the headboard, pulling out the flashlight on my phone. The scent was strongest here and I was worried about it. My house is old, and it wasn't even two years ago that my bubba had changed all the outlets out, and installed fire safety boxes in them.

Thank every star and every God that exists in the entire universe, for people who refuse to take any shortcuts with anything that could endanger the lives of the people they care about.

When the light illuminated the outlet, I could see the plastic was melted and charred around the prongs of the cords plugged into them. I quickly yanked the cords out, hissing in pain as the cords themselves burned my hands.

I turned to my fiance and told him, showing him the plugs, and he nodded, before I went out to notify the commander-in-chief of medical staffing and electrical/fire safety of the household about the situation. He went to go check, and it wasn't even 50 seconds later the electricity was off.

They allowed the plate to cool first, then unscrewed it to find the source of the danger. Once inside they found something of what could only be described as a mass stink bug and Asian lady beetle suicide (see top image).

The bugs had packed themselves into the outlet and caught themselves and the wires on fire. The only thing that kept my house from burning down was the fire safety box that had been installed two years prior.

So I guess, I'm saying, check your outlets!

And do the deep cleaning maintenance on your dryer, because that is the first leading cause of house fires in America. It's the stupid things like this that lead to disasters for people, and they can be prevented.

We've since unscrewed all of the outlets and cleaned out the ones that needed cleaning. And luckily, we'd already gotten into the back of the dryer to wipe it out and vacuum the lint and dust.

Remember, anything electrical generates heat, and things like the outlets, the back of your dryers, inside your fans, and vents need to be cleaned out every so often.

Also, with winter coming, remember those who use a fireplace to get that chimney swept before your first fire of winter.

I was lucky because had that fire safety box not worked properly, the bed would have ignited in seconds, and had I not followed my instincts when the smell hit me, my whole family could have died.

Please be safe. And remember the little things are the most important.

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