Fire-cracker and cow dung explosion

I wanted to attach an image of cow dung, but I could not bring myself to do that, coz I never saw cow dung at such a close range as the picture was (here is the link) don't say that I didn't warn.

Long time ago I went to my village were I am allowed to be the animal I am, no reigns, no need to be a snob, a knob or a nob. Normally among kids in village its more about how fast you can run, climb the tree or tie a bell around a bull's neck.

This is the story about my vacation. My cousins and I were playing, and because we were a lot into modifying things, we decided to do something radical.

It was Diwali so we decided to make our own mega explosive, really noisy fire cracker.

We took couple of these shown in the picture, these are Chinese, the Indian versions have better wick.

But these firecrackers have a problem, they go off very quickly and in a way you can blow your hand off if not careful.

So we decided to find a way to make is safe but loud. We found another version of fire cracker which is pretty loud and kind of scary but it has a slow burning wick, that gives us enough time to run. Look at the picture on the left.

Now what we did was we super glued couple of those above with the one on the side and kind of connected the short wicks to the bottom of the slow burning wick.


So the bomb was ready, but it looked kind of dangerous, I have no idea what flipped inside my brain but I decided to plant the bomb in the largest cow dung I could find, which was conveniently near a store that used to rip us off.

We needed something to light it up, but we were not so sure about going inside the house for asking. Coz we have a notorious reputation. If any of my associates including me ask for something that has to do with fire, we will be punished.

So one of my not-so-smart cousin, who apparently was shaking with fear brought a colored sparkles instead of incense stick (incense stick allows to light up the wick with precision), he went near the bomb and tried to lit it, but because of its immense heat, the sparkle burnt the wick faster than it should.

AND BADA BOOM it went, massive ammount of cow-dung flying every where. I was smarter so I stood behind a pillar, but my cousins were not spared.

The one who lit the bomb was completely covered in cow-dung, his face was black from the soot and he was belowing smoke out of his nostrils. The other cousin managed to start running, so he was half covered with dung. I was already behind a wall, I was safe.

I saw the impact of the blast next day in the morning, the shop's shutter and it's hoarding was covered in cow dung. Not a single thing in the vicinity was spared. two cars and a bike....completely covered in cow dung.

It took few days for my cousin to recover from that blast!! and the smell of the dung didn't leave him for days.

My cousin went " YEAH!! lets do it again" and after few days we modified a rocket, which did not take off, and the whole thing blew on ground, burnt my uncle's favorite rose bush, and we got thrashed and grounded.

The cow-dung smell was bad, but the revenge I took was sweet.

I don't lit fire-cracker's any more, I think its just not good for the environment and mostly because they are made by child laborers.