A truly bizarre thing happened to me this afternoon. I was walking through a parking lot and smelled smoke — then discovered it emanating up from the the dried mulch in one of those divider islands that separate the sections of the parking lot.

I promptly stomped on it — but it wasn’t enough. The first tiny triangle of flame flickered into life at my feet.

I nearly panicked, then successfully stomped out the nascent fire — and then I tore into the mulch bed looking for any more signs of it. Then I just hovered and stomped for a while just to make sure. I must have looked like a madman to other people in the parking lot. (And there were several.) Or maybe like someone playacting Godzilla.

Life is weird. The fire’s genesis is a mystery. (I was expecting to find a cigarette butt, but there were none to be found.) Maybe it was ashes from a cigarette smoked by someone who’d already departed the lot?