Suicidal Squirrels Kill University's Power Twice

Two squirrels in the University of South Florida area learned the hard way that playing around inside an electrical substation is a bad idea – a really bad idea.

It seems the frisky critters managed to cut the power to an estimated 7,000 Tampa Electric Co. customers two days in a row. Their antics even led to traffic signals on the campus going dark as TECO workers scrambled to restore power to the campus and nearby residential areas.

The first power outage was reported Thursday morning, shutting off power to roughly 70 percent of the campus, the Tampa Bay Times reported. It took about 45 minutes for TECO to restore power that time.

The second outage came Friday evening, and also lasted less than an hour, Channel 10 reported.

See Also:

• Baby Squirrel, Feisty Bird Rescued by Clearwater Police
• Goat ‘Charged with Disorderly Intoxication’

Both cases, as TECO confirmed on its Twitter account, were blamed on squirrels.

“The USF outage was caused by a squirrel in the electrical substation,” the company tweeted.

“Same substation, different squirrel,” Cherie Jacobs, TECO spokeswoman, was quoted by the Times as saying Friday.

While the good news is the outages were relatively brief both times, the story didn’t end so well for the squirrels. Both died, Channel 10 reported.

A squirrel was also to blame for an outage that impacted about 1,450 customers in the Northdale area Friday. In that case, TECO tweeted, the critter managed to short out overhead equipment.