Exploding, fiery squirrel sparks wildfire

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

One misstep by a squirrel today caused a good sized wildfire a few miles down the road from here. Poor little feller never knew what hit him.



According to the report he bit into a high tension line and burst into flames. Little Sammy's flaming, charred body went flying through the air, sparking a large grass/sage fire when he hit the ground. I doubt squirrels nibble on electrical wires, more likely he reached out for the bare 30,000 volt wire while walking the grounded one. Nonetheless the story does conjur up some comical imagery. You can just imagine cute little Sammy the Squirrel, going about minding his own business, walking the wire with an nut in his mouth, when in a instant he becomes an exploding fiery furball



Poor squirrel :{



Am I sadistic??



Vaughn

 

[Cummins4Life]

:-laf :-laf Thats a hard way to BBQ:-laf

 

[DarrellB]

Never had BBQed squirrel, but I bet it's gooooooood stuff. :-laf :-laf



Pass the beer and I'm in. Oo. Oo.

Darrell

 

[Champane Flight]

Had one.

We had one blow a sub-station at one of our pump stations. It just laid there and fryed.

 

[Karl2500]

A bit off topic but one of these tree rodents dented the hood of my truck last night. I was unloading the baby from the back seat and heard a ruckus in the tree above the driveway, I looked up just in time to see this grey furball swan dive from 25 feet up and land on my hood. He layed there for a second or two and got up and scampered away. I wouldn't mind if this one burst into flames! now I have a dime sized ding in the hood to remind me of him.

 

[Scot]

I have heard of squirrels cuasing fires from chewing through wires. They are extremely destructive if they get into thr attic.



We ran a powerline fire call many years ago and the only evidence of the cause was a complete fox squirrel tail. So much for his day!

 

[rrausch]

Squirrels make good eatin'! We ate a ton of 'em growin' up. Usually I popped them out of trees with my trusty single-shot . 22

My Mom would take a couple of squirrels and put them in a roasting pan and cover them with carrots & potatoes and add water and then put biscuits all over the top. A hour or so in a 350 oven and bingo... squirrel pot pie! Yum Yum

 

[Diesel Freak]

sounds familiar... .



We were moored in Bremerton, and we lost shore power... . the whole Pier lost power... . the cause was a rat that had gnawed into the cables and shorted a phase to the conduit. BB-Q'd critter!

 

[redramnc]

Power company got tired of responding to complaints from me and a few neighbors about intermittent power outages. Seeing how we are all on the same transformer and are the first pole in the neighborhood and nobody else was complaining they got the boom truck out and had a look. Seems that one of the resident tree rats had make a shortcut down the line and stopped to rest on top of the transformer. Must have picked the wrong direction to start back on his way because the only thing left was footprints on the top surface and some hair melted on the post insulator feeding the transformer. Insulator wasn't doing too good a job so we were getting arcs and opens.



Had a TV news story a few years ago that showed the remains of a tree rat that managed to blow up a substation on the NCSU campus. Cleared out half of the campus for a whole afternoon due to the ensuing fire and smoke. Can you say PCB?

 

[gitchesum]

Another power killer is a racoon.

A couple of years ago, on New Years Eve. A racoon somehow got into the main power supply of the Conoco Refinery in Lake Charles. Seems he found a different way to keep warm



Killed power to the entire refinery shutting it down for a week or so. Millions of dollers lost due to a fried racoon.

 

[MPatrick]

Fried

A few years ago, while I was catching bait. I saw a large Brown Pelican attempt to land on a power line. The Pelican landed but, he touched the other wire with a wing or something. BANG! Loud as a M-80, 5 feet from your ear! The crabs dined well that day.

 

[Whitmore]

Your killin me

going about minding his own business, walking the wire with an nut in his mouth

 

[Motorhead]

I wonder if when the juice hit him, he cracked his nut! :--)

 

[PUMPERDUDE]

Speaking of pelicans.

We had a 2" vent pipe on one of our platforms sticking out at about a 30* angle. When making our daily check of the facility here is a pelican hanging by his bill. Only thing I could figure is he must have tried to make a landing,slipped and his bill stuck in the pipe. May God rest his Kama Kazi Teredactyl soul.