Blackout caused by cat chasing mouse

A cat chasing a mouse are blamed for a three-day blackout in the Albanian capital of Tirana. Agents for Tom and Jerry had no comment. From the BBC News:

The animals ran into an area of high-voltage cables and were electrocuted, a spokeswoman for the firm - Kesh - told Reuters news agency.

"We took pictures because we've never had anything like this," she said.

Link (via Fortean Times)

• [pinguis]

  @9 there was a famous ocurrence in portugal a few years ago, when a stork caused an outage in half the country

• [strider_mt2k]

  Where the hell are the pictures.

  It’s either them, or a thousand-word description for balance.

• [mindysan33]

  This reminds me a bit of the moose on a telephone pole, but I don’t really know why…

  http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/103259.html

  Mindy

• [el dueno]

  I wanted to see the photo of the charged remains of the cat and mouse published with the news story, yet all we see when you go to the link is a photo of a high voltage transmission tower, which is probably a stock photo of an uninvoled tower.

  el dueno

• [Takuan]

  an uninvoled tower? rodents everywhere!

• [st vincent]

  Albanian folk song?:

  Tirana, oh, Tirana
  plunged in darkness again tonight
  oh your red, red power is failing
  and your black cat’s a terrible sight

• [Takuan]

  first!

  http://www.blogdelossimpson.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/07.gif

• [Slowermo]

  I wouldn’t discount the cause being anvils falling from high places or rabbit burrowing cross-country just yet.

• [Enochrewt]

  They took pictures of smoking corpses?

• [jjasper]

  
  “We took pictures because we’ve never had anything like this,” she said.

  What, is no one watching Tom And Jerry cartoons anymore?

• [Christopher]

  Since the feline and rodent in question were electrocuted, I would have thought of Itchy and Scratchy before T&J…

• [Neko]

  Awww, that’s horrible.

• [Takuan]

  of course its horrible, that’s why we laugh

• [Santa’s Knee]

  Albania, huh?

  I blame this man:

  http://www.filmweb.no/bilder/multimedia/archive/00099/Clive_Owen_som_Dalto_99101o.jpg

• [sawatzky]

  This type of occurrence is more common than you might think, even in countries with state of the art power grids. In Canada squirrels frequently cause pole files and blackouts by shorting out transformers or by chewing through lines. In the last 5 years alone I can think of 3 separate wildlife caused power failures. The electric co always documents the charred and smoking remains… even if they’re human.

• [jetsetsc]

  The article has the gall to include the quote “We took pictures because we’ve never had anything like this,” and not include said pictures?

• [Santa’s Knee]

  #9:

  Yes, this happens in Canada – but what about “countries with state of the art power grids”?

• [Parq]

  Naturally, if they did take a picture, it would show the two animals stretched out pool-cue straight, in silhouette, with their skeletons visible, surrounded by jagged yellow lines.