The Squirrel Did It.

At 11 AM yesterday morning our power went out!  I heard a "BANG" just as the lights went out!  Hmmmmm... We waited an hour, because these things don't usually last that long.   So after an hour I went to the store to buy some things.  What was unfortunate was that Stan and Ann were coming for dinner, and Kathy was just starting to bake a pie for dessert.  So we were stuck.  On the way back from the store, I was looking up and down streets to see if I could see a repair truck.  I didn't see anything, until I turned up Laurel avenue and as I got close to our house, there was the repair truck!  So I walked up to where the lineman was preparing his tools and equipment before getting in the bucket.  I asked what caused the outage.  I thought maybe a transformer had exploded or something.  He walked over to some leaves by the side of the street, and moved some leaves out of the way with his foot;  "This squirrel caused it. He must have been walking around up on the transformer and unfortunately part of him was on one wire and part of him on the other, and he was a conduit for a very high voltage and he was electrocuted, and that blew the fuse."  He said that when the fuse blew, that was the bang I heard. He said he needed to replace the giant fuse, and then go to a substation to reset something else before we would have power.  What was really nice is that he was so friendly and answered all the questions I had and I really appreciated that.

Well this is the poor squirrel.   He was just trying to find something to eat, and going about his day.  But he stepped on the wrong thing, sad to say.  Sorry for the disturbing picture.

So here is the lineman at work in his bucket.  He is WAY up in the air.  He is wearing orange rubber insulating sleeves which is a safety device just in case he accidentally brushed up against a live wire!  The arm connected to the bucket is made of fiberglass, so it is insulated from the ground, another safety feature of his equipment.  Well after a while the truck went away, heading off to the substation, and about an hour after that the power came back on.  Boy, we really take the electric service for granted, don't we!  The good news is that Kathy got the pie baked in time and we had a lovely dinner together!