Funny News Articles
Suicide Squirrels Driving Utilities Nuts
By Alan Gomez
USA Today
(March 12) - Every year, Neil Engelman carefully collects his data, stands before his company's board of directors and is asked the same question: What caused more outages? The lightning or the squirrels?
Four of the past five years, the answer has been the squirrels, says Engelman, vice president of operations for the Lincoln Electric System in Nebraska. Nebraska is not alone. Many states are grappling with a big increase in the number of power outages caused by squirrel electrocutions.
Squirrels that fry themselves on power lines and transformers cause tens of thousands of blackouts every year.
Some states have seen a massive jump in recent years in the number of such outages. In Georgia, squirrel-related outages more than tripled from 5,273 in 2005 to 16,750 in 2006.
While the outages are usually smaller than ones caused by weather, they are costly. Georgia Power officials estimate the rodents cost them $2 million last year. Stopping the squirrels is costing utilities millions more dollars.
"It's serious when it causes power outages to 50-60,000 people," said Cathy Engel, a spokeswoman for PECO, which provides electricity to the Philadelphia area.
It appears that the problem may in part be due to acorns.
Acorns from oak trees are a squirrel's main diet, says Peter Smallwood, a squirrel expert and biology professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. When oaks produce more acorns, you get more squirrels - and more outages.
Smallwood, who has studied squirrels for more than 20 years, said their affinity for power lines and fighting through manmade barriers is in their nature.
"They're naturally curious, and they are also determined," Smallwood said.
Squirrels are not electrocuted when they run across power lines. It's when their body makes contact with both the wire and either the ground or a transformer that they become a conduit for electricity to flow through.
"That completes the circuit and bammo!" said Ed Bettinger of the Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
Among recent outages:
-- A squirrel caused a power outage in October that shut down Merced College, southeast of San Francisco, for half the day.
-- In January, a squirrel cut power to 4,500 customers in Amarillo, Tex.
-- Hundreds of gallons of raw sewage poured into Mobile Bay in Alabama after a squirrel cut power to a sewage lift station there.
Stopping the squirrels is not easy.
"Those guys are awfully clever," said Tim Fox with Ameren, which provides electricity to St. Louis-area homes and businesses.
"When they want to get into something, they do," Fox said.
In Lincoln, dubbed a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation, "squirrel guards" have been placed on all 19,391 transformers.
The guards vary. Some are plastic or silicone caps that protect the point where the power line and the transformer meet. The "Critter Guard" features a flat disk that spins around whenever a squirrel tries to climb past. Others deliver a minor shock to the squirrel to scare it off.
PECO, which powers Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, spends $1 million a year on squirrel guards to stop outages from "those rascally little varmints," Engel said.
The utilities say they're seeing some success. PECO has seen its squirrel-related outages tumble from 11,605 in 2003 to 1,345 in 2006.
But squirrels adapt to the technology, forcing the utilities to switch to different forms of what's known in the business as "wildlife abatement technology."
"Whenever we think we've got them figured out, they try something else," Engelman said.
California City Tries Squirrel Birth Control
AP
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (March 5) - Officials have tried poison, gassing and euthanasia to control a breeding frenzy among squirrels in a city park here. Now, they plan to give birth control a shot.
Under a new program to start this summer, squirrels in Palisades Park will be injected with an immuno-contraceptive vaccine to stunt their sexual development.
"We don't want to kill them if we don't have to," said Joe McGrath, the city's parks chief. "I personally like squirrels, but we also have to be receptive to the county's concerns."
Health officials say the squirrels, which number about 1,000 in the park, pose a public health risk. They warn that the rodents are aggressive and may carry rabies or host fleas that can spread disease, such as bubonic plague.
Since 1998, Santa Monica has been cited five times by Los Angeles County for squirrel overpopulation. But the suppression methods it has used, including euthanasia, have angered animal-loving activists.
City officials say the infertility shots offer a diplomatic solution.
The vaccine, developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stops ovulation and lactation in female squirrels, and testicular development in males. The shots, running $2 to $10, have no side effects such as swelling, said James Gionfriddo, a USDA wildlife biologist.
Santa Monica would be the second city in the state, after Berkeley, to try the immunization program.
Animal activist Catherine Rich said she supports the vaccine program but believes any health risk posed by the squirrels is overblown.
"There is not a pressing threat of squirrels attacking people," Rich said, "so I don't know why the county is getting their panties in a bunch."