By coincidence, yesterday I was mowing the lawn and the mower engine surged a couple times. It's a John Deere tractor and I thought I'd better check the oil...ya never know. I pulled the dipstick and it looked good. While pondering my next move, my cell phone rang and after a two minute chat, I was back to the tractor. I'll start it up and see if it does it at idle, I decide. Turn the key and it fired up like a champ. One second later I'm being sprayed in the face with warm brown oil and there's a cloud of brown fog so think you can taste it. I managed to get my hand on the key and get it shut down but not before I create a 6 foot circle of sticky slick goo. Yeah, don't run it with the oil dipstick on the work bench. Bright side? After I wipe the tractor down it looked like new!
It ran fine right after btw. Of course it did.