In a sizzling display of sabotage, a daredevil or just plain dim-witted squirrel brought down a Vienna power transformer Thursday morning, and with it the electricity of 2,700 residents and a handful of traffic lights. Around 7:00 a.m., the tiny adventurer made it through fences, over barriers and past barbwire, oblivious to the bold-faced signs warning that electricity discriminates against no person — or critter. He leapt onto the Dominion Power transformer — a giant green box — and reached for his thankless prize, a mess of wires packed with high-voltage electricity.
“Electricity looks for the fastest way to the ground. That squirrel became the fastest way to the ground,” said Le-Ha Anderson, a Dominion spokeswoman. Similar incidents happen about a half-dozen times a year, she said.
Its flow of electricity interrupted, the transformer and another piece of equipment caught fire. And around Vienna, coffee quit percolating, hair dryers quit drying and stop lights went black. The squirrel did not survive.
No traffic accidents resulted from the outages, said a spokesman for the Vienna Police Department. Power was returned to residents between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m.
Vienna Animal Warden John Barker — and, yes, he’s heard that joke — said that most area wildlife disrupt human affairs in less incendiary ways.
“Usually it’ll be someone walking into the backyard and a fox is going through, or some critters trying to take up residence beneath a shed — that’s about as extreme as it gets,” Barker said. “I understand that years ago a bear came through, but that was before my time.”
And for that, Northern Virginia residents should be thankful. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Wednesday on a woman whose next-door neighbors are a family of six raccoons in an abandoned house. They hang from the porch roof to watch her comings and goings, and they make a sleepless racket scampering atop the roof at night.
At a Canberra, Australia, nature reserve, a runner was knocked unconscious last spring by a “boxing” kangaroo, according to local reports.
And in January, a 4-year-old horse had to be rescued from a swimming pool in the village of Godshill, U.K., according to the BBC. The horse’s name is Mischief.
