Aaarrgghhh!!! We’re out of gas!

Silence Dogood here. Talk about a sinking feeling! You turn on the gas (propane) burner under your teapot. You sit down at the computer. A few minutes later you think, “Yikes! I forgot about the teapot!” You leap up, rush to the kitchen, and far from confronting a nuclear cloud of steam pouring from the spout, there’s… nothing. No steam, no hissing noise of rapidly heating water, nothing. The dial says the burner is on, but you don’t see any sign of flames, so you crane your neck to look under the pot… nothing. What the bleep?!

This happened to me this morning (before my first cup of tea, too, double aarrgghh). Of course, I instantly swung around to check on our parrot, Plutarch, and three parakeets, since a gas leak will kill birds long before it affects other creatures (thus the poor canary in the coalmine). But they were fine. And, I belatedly realized, I didn’t smell any gas, either. (Propane is actually odorless, but the gas companies add a mildly foul-smelling component so you’ll always know when the gas is on or if it’s leaking.)

So I turned on another burner. Nothing. I lit a match, turned on the original burner, put the match to where the gas should be coming out: nothing. (This is one of the great joys of gas stoves: You can still light them with matches even when the power goes out, so at least you can cook.) I had to face the sorry truth, since, as Sherlock Holmes famously said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” We had to have run out of gas.

In case you’re wondering why this should be improbable, it’s because, like our fuel oil, our propane is on automatic renewal, which is to say, the companies are supposed to come out and fill your tank (or, in the case of the propane, possibly switch your tank) before you run completely dry. But accidents happen. Once we even ran out of fuel oil (in, of course, the dead of winter).

Needless to say, I was on the phone with the propane company on the dot of 9 a.m., and with luck, we’ll have our stove back in operation sometime today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m lucky enough to have one of those little countertop electric burners, since only three burners on our, ahem, vintage Caloric stove have worked since our friend Ben and I bought the house, and sometimes I really need four. So I was able to enjoy my morning tea after all. But still… aaarrrgghhhh!!!!

             ‘Til next time,

                         Silence