And now, a few important safety tips:
1. Before you turn on your oven, make sure there are no bullets inside. A woman in Tampa was injured this week when she neglected to take this simple precaution. She said she was preheating her friend’s oven in order to make waffles, unaware that her friend used his oven to store ammunition.
Personally, I find this story hard to believe. Who makes waffles in the oven? Modern waffle irons are electric appliances that provide their own heat; old-fashioned waffle irons use heat from the top of the stove. There’s no such thing as a baked waffle.
2. To be extra-safe, store your ammunition somewhere other than the oven. I’m going to go even further and recommend that you keep all your explosives out of the oven.
3. If you find a bunch of dead mice in a tree, you can eat up to 8 of them every 4-6 hours, but don’t eat more than 32 in a 24-hour period. Don’t eat any dead mice if you’re pregnant, have liver problems, or drink more than three alcoholic beverages per day. You can serve dead mice to your children, but only in smaller portions. Do not, under any circumstances, feed dead mice of unknown origin to your cat.
4. Remember to periodically check your water supply for decomposing human remains, especially if you’ve noticed that your water has “a funny taste”. Corpse water can sometimes be perfectly safe to drink; however, the presence of a dead body in your water tank may be an indication that you have a murderer running around.
5. If you do find a murderer on your property, don’t let him store anything in your oven.
Unlikely Explanations 
We had the same thought: why *would* someone make waffles in the oven? Is that even legal?
Also, I once used something similar to Pulp-O-Mizer (or maybe that was it) years ago to turn my favorite picture of my husband into a movie poster. I lost the picture and eventually all I could do was crop out the movie poster part to salvage his face.
That’s a really sweet story. Which is interesting, because under normal circumstances cropping a guy’s face from a movie poster would be kind of creepy.
When I first heard about the exploding oven, that was my first thought too, who cooks waffles in the oven? But perhaps this guy used his waffle iron for more nefarious purposes. Or his toaster. Or his common sense.
I hope this comment goes through; I’ve had a lot of trouble commenting on your blog lately!
I think if you’re going to shoot bullets from an appliance, your best bet probably would be a toaster, because you can at least sort of aim it at someone.
Sorry about the comment trouble. This one went through on its own, and I don’t see anything from you in the spam queue (although I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by the volume and just click on “empty spam”). If it happens again, please drop me a line at info@unlikelyexplanations.com.
You know what? I think it would kinda make sense to store guns in the oven using the thieves-will-never-look-here logic, but why just the ammo? Why would you just put the ammo in the oven? Like, well they might steal all my guns, but at least they won’t have any ammo! I mean, it’s not like they could just, I dunno, purchase more ammo.
It might be some kind of home-protection strategy. Like, if a burglar breaks into your house, you offer to bake him a cake and then carefully position yourself so that he’s standing between you and the oven.
I’ve learned so much this morning, thank you. Now I’m off to climb our water tank and check for any bodies inside. We only use the rainwater for the gardening, but I wouldn’t want corpse water to cause anything bad to happen to the plants. The neighbours might judge me.
Don’t you hate that? First they ask you where you got your dead body and how long you’ve had it, then they start comparing it to all the other dead bodies in the neighborhood, and it just turns into something ugly and competitive.
I read that body-in-a-cistern story. One of the people quoted said the when he turned on the faucet, the water was black. Um…at what point do you decide then to drink it? I also watched the survelliance video of the woman, who later turned up dead in the cistern, getting on and off the hotel elevator because I like to torture myself. Maybe I would be the one who would drink black water.
The weird thing is that the first tests said that the water was safe to drink — which is pretty hard to reconcile with that quote, unless the guy somehow managed to confuse the water tap and coffeemaker. I’m actually more impressed, though, that someone had the common sense to reverse that decision.
That corpse story is totally gross (unlike other corpse stories, I guess, which are all rainbows and sunshine??) And I agree– nobody bakes waffles. I mean NOBODY.
I should probably make it clear, though, that bullet wounds are not an appropriate punishment for improper waffle preparation.
This really says a lot about me that I, too, yelled out WHAT THE HELL?! when I read someone was going to bake waffles in the oven.
That body in the water tank story has given me nightmares. I don’t drink water in a hotel even when it’s not black.
It’s probably a good idea not to touch anything in a hotel.
Excellent tips for a tranquil domestic life. I would have stored the ammunition in the water tank and roasted the dead mice in the oven.
Don’t forget to remove the little parachutes first.
You have done us all a favor. I have removed all our ammo from the oven- who’d have thought that could be a problem?
I hope you moved it somewhere safe, like in the fireplace.
I really ought to share this with The Boy. When we first started dating he foolishly started the oven without checking it first. Luckily I just stored bread in there and I caught it before he melted all the plastic to my bread. He thought I was nuts. This should put it all into perspective.
The mental picture of parachuting mice was so good I couldn’t finish the article. I gather it had a sinister turn after the first paragraph.
I’m glad you caught it before you and The Boy died from toxic bread-plastic fumes. I keep my bread in the freezer or on the counter, depending on how soon I plan to eat it (I have a breadbox, but I use it to store tiny cans of cat food).
And don’t let me near an oven, either.
Pre-made garlic cheese bread from the store – 425 degrees for 5-7 minutes – simple enough right?! *sigh* It takes a lot longer than that to scrub the cheese off your oven when you freak out, drop the pan and each piece lands (cheese / garlic side down) inside the nicely preheated oven. Like two nights ago. Yup. *groan* :(
Why did you freak out? Did a dead mouse parachute into your kitchen?
Seriously, waffles . . . in the oven. A toaster, okay – not great waffles, but it makes sense. I don’t get the oven thing. And clearly they aren’t good friends if he didn’t warn her that his oven might shoot her.
Exactly. If he’d warned her, she could at least have tried reasoning with it.
I’m getting a bulletproof apron before I’ll use the oven ever again.
Or you could get one of those “kiss the cook” aprons, cross out the “kiss”, and write in “please don’t shoot at”. Although I guess ovens can’t read, so your idea is probably better.
Bullets in an oven. Now I’m intrigued. What else can I store in there?
I never preheat anyways.
I like to store my important papers in mine.
You don’t preheat? I can’t believe you admitted that in public.