Small Town

I love living in a town where an entire full length article is devoted to 1/2 hour power outage caused by a squirrel! No tree hugging, green touting, environmentalist is going to protest and demand the redesign of substations all over the nation because of the depleating brown squirrel population. No over zealous city councilman is going to ask for a longitudinal study on the future implications or possibility of rodent infestations and the cost analysis for potential possible power outages. The school system will not be developing a policy and procedure for occassions that the power is knocked out by natural selection. Nobody is going to design an expensive habitate alternative for the squirrels to help them find a happy safe place to play. Although, depending on the crew, there might be an outside chance that someone considered... even for a brief moment... of taking the little guy home to throw into a stew.

My comments are in purple
Squirrel dies while knocking out power (Like that was his goal - He was on a MISSION)
By APRIL AVISONEagle Staff Writer
About 750 Bryan Texas Utilities customers lost power for half an hour Monday morning when a squirrel got caught in a piece of equipment. (First indications included a customer commenting,,,Does something smell like bbq chicken?)
A crew was sent immediately after the power went out in the Briarcrest Drive and 29th Street area about 9:30 a.m., said Bob Wheeler, a BTU spokesman. (instead of waiting the obligatory 45 minutes to finish the morning coffee break)
Wheeler said the major customers affected by the outage were The Bryan-College Station Eagle, Bryan High School, Wal-Mart SuperCenter and Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse. (ergo why we are doing this story... we HAD to find out why the power was down for those minutes - people NEED to know)
But Sandy Farris, spokeswoman for Bryan schools, said the outage didn't cause much trouble.
"Other than the logistics of dealing with over 3,000 kids in a building with no power, we didn't have any problems," she said with a laugh. (Cuz it was a stupid question) "We moved students to rooms with windows, and some students went outside. It was fine.
"I wouldn't say we have outages frequently, but they're not uncommon," Farris added. "We know what to do." (DUH)
Although the Bryan High students weren't bothered by the outage, there was one casualty: the squirrel. (All methods were exhausted trying to revive him... his name won't be released until his next of kin are notified)
The animal (in a presumed drunken state) crawled up (or scampered) into a piece of equipment between electrical wires and the ground at a substation behind Ken Martin's Safari Grille restaurant, (where he will be served as Tuesday's Special) officials said. When the critter got caught in the voltage, it caused the equipment to "short out," (Quotes to emphasize the highly technical term) said BTU Division Manager Pat Kasper. (We will bypass on the dramatic re-enactment here but it would have included a large ZAPPOP sound)
"Basically what happened is, we have special equipment that looks (cuz equipment can see... the technoweenies say "monitors" and "detects" )for abnormalities within the flow of electricity. It looks for fault," Kasper said. "When it sees a fault, (it says OH CRUD and) the protective equipment opens up (HUH?? - What opens..?!?!? Is this Ned the Janitor answering the questions for Pat?) for safety reasons and to minimize the extent of damage to our equipment. It just shuts it down." (of course, cuz a french fried furry is more important than let's say operating equiptment at the hospital.)
BTU officials said crews that responded to the outage removed the squirrel and turned the power back on. (What were they going to say... We poked at it for awhile but then Earl said... NOPE it's dead.. and Earl knows what dead looks like so we got a stick and scrapped it off the coils. Ted walked around and found a switch that was on the OFF position and so we called our supervisor cuz that just aint right. Supervisor said see what would happen - so Ted turned the switch to ON and there was this kinda humming sizzling noise. Meanwhile, Earl kicks the dead critter around abit and said that thare's a squirrel and Earl knows squirrel... .") Officials were unable to offer a cost estimate for the work, according to Wheeler.
"It just tripped the power, (remember earlier it was KNOCKING OUT POWER not just tripping it) and the crews that went out to fix it were on the clock and working their normal shifts ," he said. (while looking at the reporter like she lost her mind - it would cost more to do the analysis than it cost to flip the switch - he's thinking SHE needs an estimate, for a good psychiatrist)