Fried Squirrel

I have read several articles now about rolling power blackouts in california.  They say it's the first ones since 2001. Bullcrap, we have had rolling blackouts every year for about 10 years now.  At least around here anyway. I know I would come home from work and have to reset all the clocks.

I remember about 5 maybe 6 years ago now, the power went out. 

I went next door to check on the neighbors, but they had power, which I thought was strange. They said it went out then came back on. So I went to the neighbor directly north of me, and their power was also out. So I got to looking at the wires and the transformers, turns out my house and the one directly north of me are fed by a single transformer, and the houses east of me are on a different transformer.

So us and the neighbor who was also without power called pg&e to come fix the power.  Surprise surprise they showed up within the hour, I couldn't believe it.

Anyway the worker got in his boom and went up to the transformer and immediately saw that a fuse of some sort was blown. So he came down to get the repair part, and lo and behold what did he see on the ground? An extremely fat and extremely electrocuted squirrel.  I don't know how much squirrels weigh, but this was a big fat one. Apparently he was climbing the transformer and shorted something out, and boom, he was gone.

The neighbor and I had a big laugh over that, trying to decide who was going to have squirrel for supper.

Anyway, I hope I am prepared for a rolling blackout. Or a longer blackout. If any of you readers are in california or the west coast, good luck this week.