Where's Smokey the Bear when you need him?

That's really gotta hurt and the pain shows on the face of Bavaria's Forestry Minister Helmut Bunner, who thought he was dumping dead ashes in a small forest near his house.

A few hours later, he noticed flames in the area and called fire services. "I totally underestimated it, it's really embarrassing. You can't be careful enough," he told an interviewer from Bavarian Radio. The fires was quickly put out, despite dry conditions in the woods.

The embarrassment was perhaps doubled by Brunner's appearance as the face of repeated warnings to the public all summer long about being careful about the danger of forest fires.