OAKVILLE, ON - A tragic fire claimed the home of local professor and old earth creationist Dr. Hank Thornton Thursday morning, as he reportedly attempted to pop a bag of popcorn for 1.7 million years, interpreting the instructional label of "Cook for 2:30" symbolically rather than arriving at the plain meaning of just two minutes and thirty seconds.

Dr. Thornton states he sensed something was amiss when his home filled with smoke after just six minutes of popping, and double-checked the box, just to be sure.

"I got the box back out and double-checked the instructions, and there it was, plain as day: 2:30 - which obviously means approximately 1.7 million years," Thornton told reporters outside his home, as firefighters worked to contain the waning blaze that had spread from his microwave to consume his one-story bungalow. "I just don't understand where I went wrong. I faithfully followed the instructions to the letter!"

"Orville Redenbacher's will be hearing from my attorneys," he warned.

One of his fellow professors, a staunch gap theorist, later surmised that reading the popping instructions through a proper hermeneutic would reveal that the popcorn was to be placed in the microwave for approximately fourteen billion years, then popped for a literal two-and-a-half minutes.