What other species (leaving humans aside) is smart enough to get through all the barriers around an electrical transformer, but stupid enough to actually do so? FAZP.
The company I worked for published a Utilities supply magazine. Seemed like half the articles involved humane products to keep squirrels out of all sorts of electrical boxes.
Unlike the humans who get fried that way, they don't even have the excuse that they were high on crystal meth and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The first year in my house in Hilliard, OH, the power would go down for a few minutes every week. After about a few months of complaining, one of the guys they sent out from the power company found out why.
The local transformer for the area was faulty, and this fault was somehow attracting birds. He found a pile of dead, burned birds at the foot of the contraption.
Near as he could figure it, the birds would find their way into the box, short it out, burn and fall away so they could restore power remotely after a period. He got a crew out to replace some parts, and replace the door... and that was the last of the recurring outages.
Squirrels used to blow the can transformer up the pole in front of my place in Waltham about every six months, and, annoyingly, Boston Edison would always faff around for a couple of hours driving around the neighborhood looking for the problem rather than taking my word for it on the phone and just fixing the damned thing. One time, though, the trail was easy for them to follow...
... since the dead squirrel was still on fire atop the car parked at the bottom of the pole when the truck arrived on our street. Good thing my convertible wasn't parked down there...
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The local transformer for the area was faulty, and this fault was somehow attracting birds. He found a pile of dead, burned birds at the foot of the contraption.
Near as he could figure it, the birds would find their way into the box, short it out, burn and fall away so they could restore power remotely after a period. He got a crew out to replace some parts, and replace the door... and that was the last of the recurring outages.
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... since the dead squirrel was still on fire atop the car parked at the bottom of the pole when the truck arrived on our street. Good thing my convertible wasn't parked down there...
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