Cleaned my chimmney. Never believe what I found

[burntmuch]

Cleaned my chimmneys today. Just above the damper in the basement fireplace I found a quart of motor oil . Yep motor oil 10 w 30 to be exact. The plastic bottle was half melted. . We ve lived in this house for a year or so. We ve probably had 15 fires or so in that fireplace. Close call. What Im thinking is when the previous owner had the roof done. The guys had tools & stuff on top of the chimmney. The oil was for their nail guns or compressor or something to that effect. It got dropped down the chimmney. When I first seen it. I thought someone may have been hideing something up there. So Im thinking cool. Someones lost treasure. Nope just a quart of oil. Future house fire. Just glad I found it. 

[Sourdough]

Yep. would have caused one heck of a fire.  Could have burned the house down.

[oldandslow]

I'm not sure that it would have. I once managed to burn my garage down. Total loss, nothing salvageable I thought until I started cleaning the mess up. I was using a gallon Coleman fuel can for a gas can for my lawnmower. I figured it just contributed to the fire. When I found it the neck was blown out but it was still almost full of gas. I also had a full 55 gallon barrel of kerosene in there. All the paint was burned off the barrel but that was all the damage to it.

[mechanic]

My daughter fired up her fireplace for the first time a couple years ago, (old house, new to them), only to find a family of squirrils had moved in.  They immediately exited into the house.  I wish I coulda' seen it!