I was right! Sorta. Via Instapundit, it turns out that the flaming mouse story wasn't true, but my supposition that this might be a case of trying to get some insurance money doesn't wash either--the poor guy had no insurance.
So, what have we learned?
1. Homeowner's insurance is good.
2. If you don't have it, don't burn stuff near your house.
3. Unlike amateur online hobbyists, newspapers and other media outlets operate under a strict set of reporting guidelines and have multiple layers of editorial checks and balances to insure that rumors and half-truths do not get repeated as fact, and have a wide-reaching standard of ethical behavior that operates to hold them to a higher standard of proof and credulity.
4. If you think about it, mouse fur is pretty short, and like all fur, it would tend to singe off pretty quickly, meaning that if you DID happen to throw a live mouse in a fire, the odds of it surviving are nil, and even worse are the odds of it being able to escape the flames with fur afire, run to a house, up a wall, go inside, and still retain enough heat to start a fire.
UPDATE: BUT WAIT, ACCORDING TO SNOPES.COM, there's MORE! It seems the poor guy can't just keep his mouth shut--now he's saying that the mouse got caught on a GLUE TRAP, he couldn't get it loose, so he threw mouse and glue trap into the fire, THEN the mouse managed to free itself from the melted glue, set itself on fire, and run all the way back to the house and start the inferno.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is one magic mouse.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 11, 2006 08:41 AMSpeaking of glue and fires. Did the hobby shop in West End ever get rebuilt?
Posted by: jim at January 11, 2006 10:40 AMYes it did--there was an article about it not long ago. He is in business again in a new location.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at January 11, 2006 11:08 AM