Associated News archives...
SQUIRRELS: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, ZAP 'EM!
These cute but pesky rodents are a leading cause of unplanned outages. They chew through power lines, fry themselves by completing electrical circuits and generally wreak havoc on power grids.
Utility companies, always on the hunt for new ways to combat animals, may have found an inexpensive solution to what has long been a vexing problem.
The ZAPshield is an $11 polymer disc that arrived on the market some three years ago and delivers a non-lethal, electrostatic jolt to any varmint touching it. In Pennsylvania, PECO and PPL have both deployed the ZAPshield. Philadelphia-based PECO also uses an older, similar technology made of metal.
The idea is to give the squirrels enough of a shock to keep them away from sensitive power equipment, but not enough of one to hurt them. Inventor Jim Rauckman compares the feeling of getting zapped by the ZAPshield to walking across a carpet on a dry day and then touching someone.
"It teaches them not to be up there," he said.
image from eclectech.com UK
FROM: expressandstar.com Britain's largest Online Publication...
Squirrel puts radio off the air
Presenters at a radio station based in Kidderminster were cut off from the airwaves on Saturday for three hours – by a squirrel.
The hapless creature somehow managed to get into the transmitter site and nibbled through a wire which caused a short in a power circuit breaker. It resulted in the station, 107.2FM The Wyre, based on the Stourport Road, going off air for three hours.
Station boss Pete Wagstaff said he had realised something was wrong when he heard the station go off air early on Saturday morning.
He said: “I called the transmitter service provider and they said it was a power problem. They called me back about three hours later to say the power failure was the result of a squirrel. At first I thought the guy was nuts but he explained exactly how it happened and I didn’t like to ask what became of the squirrel.”
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