A Shocking Suspect

I've been very lucky so far this summer that even as my A/C unit hummed along for all of July and most of August, my lights have never so much as flickered to hint that I was about to lose power. I know a lot of places are not as lucky, as "brown-outs" (scheduled blackouts) have been quite common around the country as we worked our way through one of the hottest summers on record. Then again, the reason I never lost power could also be traced to the fact that the power lines going to my house are buried and out of the reach of squirrels. I was reading an article this week which reported that in just over three months upwards of 50 power outages in 24 states can be traced back to squirrels eating through power lines and causing the grid to fail. Not only are the attacks frequent and widespread, they are effective. Squirrels cutting the power have caused an airport in Virginia to close and museums to force people to look at art in the dark. They have shut down grocery stores, schools and movie theaters. They even forced a military base in Virginia go to into lockdown by setting off the security system. And these are just the squirrel attacks which were big enough to warrant a news report. Who knows how many people lost power thanks to squirrels but never knew? I am willing to bet there are plenty of people out there who owe a couple of uncomfortable nights to these annoying critters.

Now, plenty of people out there will tell you that these power outages were a natural mistake and point to the fact that the squirrels were fried in the process as proof of that. Others would even go so far as to blame humans, saying we built into the squirrels' natural habitat. However, I contend there was nothing accidental about this. Throughout the summer I have seen squirrels get through multiple defense systems that my father has set up and attack his bird feeder. My dad has bought a number of products which claim to be squirrel-proof and every single one of them has failed to keep them out. For a while there he was trying a new technique every week and the squirrels were chomping on seed before he was back in the house. At this point he has pretty much conceded defeat and just hoping the squirrels are nice enough to leave some seed to attract a few birds with what remains. Squirrels are not as stupid as we want to think and I have no doubt that if they wanted to mess with a power grid they would figure out how to do it after a couple of dry runs and would have no problem sacrificing a couple fellow squirrels to achieve their ultimate goal. (Fun fact: squirrels find other squirrels as annoying we find them.) They may just be rats with bushier tails, but squirrels are really good at problem-solving to reach their ultimate goal. Underestimating them could ultimately be our downfall.