Somehow, the blind heeler knew.

Our classification route this morning took us past yet another open sand dune. But it was almost noon, I wanted to get home and didn't stop.

Until the heeler sleeping in the back seat awoke and put her paws up by my shoulder.

Yeah, I stopped.

As soon as I let the sisters out for their dragrace, I spotted it. A plume of light blue smoke.

Pouring out of the front right wheel well.

We're on fire.

Which was surprising, 'cause I'd already cleaned the grass and rabbitbrush off the skidplate once this morning. But I grabbed my handy rebar, kept for this express purpose, and crawled under to knock the smoldering debris away from the hot catalytic converter.

And got greeted with the sight of flames leaping out at me.

Oh, shit! We're on fire!

By the time I got around the truck to grab the heelers' water jug, they had reloaded themselves into the cab.

Last time this happened, I threw them out and told them to "Get the hell away from the truck!"

It was hours before I saw the little maskless heeler again, and that only after I'd called out the search plane. (Really. Literally.)

This time I left them in the cab. And hoped I could squirt enough water up under the truck to keep them from becoming barbecue. But you know, you can't squirt water up out of a bottle that's half empty.

I'm laying underneath a burning truck. With a useless liter of water. I try splashing water into my hand, and throwing it up under the frame.

No good. All I did was make wet sand.

Wet sand!

Important safety tip... you can put out a fire by throwing handfuls of wet sand.

And yeah, the masked heeler got her run in the dunes. Where they found fresh coyote tracks.

And fresh coyote pee.