Mouse didn't start the fire/It was always burning/since the world's been turning

Remember the story this week about the mouse that burned down the house? It didn't happen.

-- A small -town rumor that sparked world -wide interest about a mouse burning down a house has been found to be untrue.After 81-year-old Chano Mares's house burned down Saturday in Fort Sumner, news services picked up the quirky story."Flaming Mouse Burns Down House" read the headline over an Associated Press story that appeared on WSBTV.com, for example.According to the initial report, Mares threw the critter in a pile of burning leaves near his home, but it ran back to the house on fire.A local firefighter said the mouse ran to just beneath a window and the flames spread up the window and throughout the house.All contents of the home were destroyed, but no one was injured.Interest in fires has been high lately. Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.The mouse story, however, has been doused by Mares."It's really humorous more than anything that a mouse burned down the house," he told KOAT-TV in Albuquerque. The mouse was dead when it hit the burning leaves.Mares said he trapped and killed the critter and tossed it on the fire.The flames, he said, probably reached his house because they were driven by high winds.

Ya know, if you ignore enough stories, sooner or later one is proven false and you can crow that you knew it was too good to be true, even if you were just too lazy to write about it.