TOKYO — A power outage that disrupted train service on the Japanese island of Kyushu was caused by a slug. The mollusk was electrocuted when it made its way into a trackside device, an investigation has concluded. The rail operator on Japan…
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/06/24-electrocuted-slug-blamed-for-japanese-rail-outage
slugs, slime, electrocution - somehow I am not coming up with an outrageous pun for all of this. A crow short circuited much of north Seattle yesterday. Animals can be fairly successful at completing unintended circuits.
Yeah, critters do have a habit of getting into places they shouldn’t go and causing havoc, for reasons only known to themselves.
We had a neighborhood lose electric power here several years ago when a squirrel climbed into a transformer and blew himself and the unit up.
Why’d he do it? Well, he wasn’t alive to be asked afterward! [swg]
It seemed like a good idea - at the time!
I am struck by the total lack of compassion for the deceased and their families.
Just remember all the insect families that are affected by every bug splattered on your windshield every time you drive - especially if you drive in Florida duing Love Bug season. By the same token, we have just survived rampant plant sex, done without any modesty at all.
Where were you during all the discussions of trees falling on the catenary in the NEC? Not one, mark you one instance of concern for the trees – it’s always that some train that we already acknowledge doesn’t go all that fast gets held up. No compassion for what happens to them afterward either – you don’t think they are lovingly replanted, or branches grafted back, did you?
Actually, further investigation revealed the true motives.
The squirrel’s amorous overtures had been rejected by a female squirrel that he had the hots for, and he had just learned that the utility was about to default on the bonds he held. So, in a fit of rage, he decided to show her and the utility. Whoops!
And people think accountants lack imagination!
Try Route 24 in Colorado during potato bug season. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…
There is actually some research that indicates squirrels come to like the ‘jolt’ they can get from low-voltage electricity, for example when they chew telephone wires, and go to considerable length to seek out and chew insulation even when treated with bitterants. This of course leads to some humor … but it was not at all funny when some early proponents of HDSL found their achievable high-speed bandwidth becoming markedly degraded due to progressive chew damage in the overhead wiring – of little import to voice communications, but lethal to the necessary low-power high-speed modulation.
Sometimes sober truth trumps imagination!
Don’t know if the squirrels were getting a ‘jolt’ when they chewed their way into my cable TV cable. Their chewing made some channels viewable and others not. Cable provider replaced the cable.