Via The Times-Reporter…

DOVER, OHIO — A squirrel caused a minor electrical power outage on E. 14th St. in Dover Tuesday afternoon.

Larry Lautzenheiser, assistant superintendent of the city’s Electric Field Division, said the squirrel caused a fuse to blow on a transformer at about 3:55 p.m.

A resident of the area reported to police that she heard a loud explosion, which Lautzenheiser said was the fuse blowing.

A crew replaced the fuse, and fewer than a dozen homes in the area were without power for about 30 minutes, Lautzenheiser said.

Via MyMotherLode.com…

Sonora, CA — Believe it or not a squirrel has caused a power outage affecting some 330 P.G.& E. customers in the Phoneix Lake Rd, Bellview Oaks and Crystal Falls areas.

P.G.& E. Spokesperson Emily Barnett says crews are on the scene. Power is scheduled to be restored to approximately 250 customers within minutes. Power for the remaining 80 customers should be restored within two hours time.

Via The Daily Record…

A man was caught after he tried to make his way through Hong Kong airport with a crocodile, six snakes, 11 flying squirrels and 46 turtles and tortoises in his case.

He was planning to take the animals from Thailand to China. When asked what the contents of his case were, he innocently replied: “A packed lunch.”

Via The MetroWest Daily News…

MARLBOROUGH, MA - Approximately 100 Marlborough households were without power shortly before noon today after a squirrel grounded an electrical wire on Church Street, a National Grid spokeswoman said.

Approximately 3,500 National Grid customers lost power at 9 a.m. this morning, though most customers had their power restored by 9:40 a.m., and by 11:15 a.m. only 100 customers were still in the dark, said spokeswoman Amy Atwood.

Atwood said the squirrel climbed onto the electrical pole and, while still partly on the pole, touched the electrical wire, thus sending an electrical current through the squirrels’ body, onto the pole and down to the ground. The squirrel was found dead on the street.

“The electricity’s always trying to get back to the earth, and if you make the path work it will follow it,” said Marlborough Fire Capt. John McGrath.

That is why people and animals should never touch electrical wires, Atwood said.

“We have animal guard on the majority of our lines and we do everything we can to prevent it but (animals) still find ways,” she said.

The electrical wire caught on fire and broke, falling onto the lawn of a private homeowner on the corner of Church and Sawin streets, McGrath said.

Via The Times and Democrat …

“I’ve been going to every one since they started in Anderson,” Larry Moore says of the Grand American Hunt and Show. “And I’ve been squirrel hunting about 15 to 20 years. That squirrel hunting is like daylight coon hunting.”

A native of Piedmont, Moore has friends who call him “L.D.” Although he’s been hunting squirrels for 20 years, he’s been hunting other game even longer. All his life, if truth be known.

“I’ve been going to every one since they started in Anderson,” Larry Moore says of the Grand American Hunt and Show. “And I’ve been squirrel hunting about 15 to 20 years. That squirrel hunting is like daylight coon hunting.”

A native of Piedmont, Moore has friends who call him “L.D.” Although he’s been hunting squirrels for 20 years, he’s been hunting other game even longer. All his life, if truth be known.

Via Radar Magazine…

Katie Couric, thin-skinned? Maybe just a little. In the just-out January issue of Esquire, the first-ever female network anchor makes it clear that she reads her own press—and remembers it. “There are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive,” she tells interviewer Tom Junod. “You guys even take a shot at me. You have something in the November issue, something about how since I’ve become an anchor, you don’t know me anymore. You don’t know me anymore? Bite me.”

America’s sweetheart is no fan of bloggers, either. “My younger daughter read something on some AOL blog, and it really bothered her,” she says. “I said, ‘When people say something like that, they’re not talking about me as a person, they’re talking about me as a commodity.’”

Feisty, I like it! And maybe Katie (or at least her daughter) does catch The Trolley Dodgers Podcast…the world may never know.

Interesting…

Dec. 13, 2006 — A new fossil discovery from China shows that a tiny squirrel-like creature glided through the air during the age of dinosaurs, more than 75 million years earlier than scientists had documented that ability in a mammal.

The creature might have even beaten birds into the air.

Like today’s flying squirrels, it stretched a furry membrane between its limbs to provide an airfoil for gliding after it jumped from a tree. But it’s not related to anything living today.

Read the entire story on Discovery.

Oh, you’re killing me guys…

A PROFESSIONAL forager from Kent is to front a new BBC show called Roadkill Café.

Fergus Drennan will use the programme to promote mown-down foxes, rats, hedgehogs, badgers and squirrels over processed food.

Mr Drennan, who describes himself as a “vegetarian who eats roadkill”, runs a company called Wild Man which sells fresh mushrooms, nuts, berries and weeds.

Eating roadkill, said Mr Drennan, is acceptable because “it’s not been killed on your behalf”.

He added: “It’s not factory farmed or pumped full of antibiotics. It is fresh, local, seasonal and nutritionally rich.”

The series will be screened on BBC Three next year.

Via kentnews.co.uk

When will they learn?

Lafayette, LA — A squirrel crossing a power line on Gilman Street near Cora Drive left 10,165 LUS customers in the dark this morning.

The outage occurred at 9:41 a.m. with power back up to about 9,000 customers within six minutes, said Terry Huval, LUS executive director.

By 10:32 a.m., the remaining customers had their power restored, Huval said.

“The cause of the outage was a squirrel that placed itself in a bad position,” Huval said.

Read the full story at The Daily Advertiser.

Too funny and yet something else that we should hope that PETA doesn’t find out about, because you can be assured that they have an opinion on the matter.

CHICAGO - Squirrels hit the genetic lottery with their chubby cheeks and bushy tails. It’s hard to imagine picnickers tossing peanuts and cookies at the rodents if they looked like rats.

But good looks alone don’t get you through Chicago winters. Nor do they help negotiate a treacherous landscape of hungry cats, cars and metal traps.

So how do they do it? And why do they search, huddle, dart, and sometimes forget where they hid their nuts?

Joel Brown aims to find out.

“We’re trying to get a glimpse of what your life is like if you are a city squirrel,” said Brown, a biologist at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

He and a team of students will trap squirrels in Chicago and its suburbs this winter, taking skin samples for DNA analysis. They’ll strap collars on them and watch what they do. And they’ll attach threads to acorns and hazelnuts, then see where the squirrels take them and when they eat them.

Read the entire story at Yahoo!