Another horror story about heat lights....

[Scales Zoo]

Some of you will remember our cage fire that was very nearly a house fire, about 4 years ago. It was stupid, heat light in a wood cage - and it killed some savanna monitors, but not the house, Sarge the dog, or our other reptiles.

Well, the monitor cages I keep in the basement were starting to cool off since it got cold. So, I bought 150 watt spot lamps to replace the 100 watt lights I had been using. I put them into the heat light fixtures, above the cages, set over the cut mesh covered cutouts in top of the cages.

January 1, Sheila woke up at a friends house crying. She had just had a nightmare that the house burnt down, and the dogs and other pets perished. We have learned to trust our dreams, I won't try to provide any explanation for it, but we've had good reason to trust them in the past.

We rushed home, to find nothing amiss. The next morning, however, Sheila woke up at 5:00 am, and soon after, smelled something. I got up, smelled something too - but it didn't seem to be fire or heat. A quick check of the house and I went back under the covers where it was warm.

An hour later, the smell was worse Sheila noticed - and when we again checked the basement, we saw that one of the heat lights had moved off of it's screeen meshed hole, and was sitting partially on the top of the melamine cage. That part of cage had started to smolder. I unplugged everything, and hit it with water. It took a gallon of water to stop the sizzling from the smoldering melamine.

As worried as I am about heat lights, I had thought that set up to be safe. If it had been a day earlier while we were away, we would have surely lost the house, the reptiles we keep here, the dogs, all of our pictures, and my baseball size ball of goobers I've been saving for 15 years to enter it in Guiness some day.

Moral of the story - heat lights in a house are very dangerous, and you should always trust your dreams or nightmares. I know of friends heat pads causing as much or more potential damage as well.

I'll let you know if I figure out a good solution to heat lights in a house, but obviously I don't have it figured out yet. I'd say get good insurance, but realistically insurance would not cover a fire started by heat light in a house, and it really shouldn't, because it is an accident waiting to happen.

Go check your heat sources!

Ryan