It’s not just severe weather, earthquakes, and floods that cause power outages around the U.S. and around the world. Mother Nature’s critters can also wreak havoc on the grid.

Just last month in Tokyo, Japan a slug (of all things) caused a black out that affected the operation of the country’s high-speed rail system. Somehow the mollusk invaded through a small crack in an electrical box and shorted out the equipment.

The incident cut power to the railway and left 12,000 passengers stranded with nothing to do but wait for help. The power outage occurred during morning rush hour at around 9:40 Tokyo time. The incident caused the company that manages the railway to shutdown 26 trains in all.

The embarrassed company sent out a spokesman to face the media and he reported that a slug caused black out had not occurred in recent years. He admitted that the critter entered the box through a small gap and that the gap would be repaired and this type of thing would never happen again.

And what happened to the poor slug? The 2cm to 3cm bug was zapped to death.

In 2016 there were at least seven occasions when an animal caused power outages in locations that spread from Seattle, Washington to Maui.

It was a raccoon that caused a black out in Seattle. Three neighborhoods in the metropolitan area lost power when the raccoon somehow got into a substation and disrupted the system. The neighborhoods went dark at about 3 a.m. and the utility company soon went on Twitter to explain the incident to customers.

It turns out that raccoons are the culprits for many of these types of occurrences. In 2015, one was responsible for a blackout in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Two years after the meltdown at the Japanese nuclear power plant at Fukushima, the system dedicated to cooling spent nuclear fuel rods suffered a totally unexpected 29-hour blackout. It was later discovered that a rat (or a rat like animal) caused the disruption. The dead rat was found near a temporary switchboard used to provide power to the cooling system. No radiation leaked as a result of the incident and no one or no thing was hurt except for the rat.

In June of 2016, a vervet monkey caused the entire country of Kenya to fall into darkness. The monkey fell on a transformer at the Gitaru hydroelectric power station and disrupted electricity that was being provided by KenGen. The circuit breaker of the transformer tripped causing the loss of 180 megawatts of power. Power was restored four hours later. Believe it or not, the monkey survived.

Birds have been known to cause blackouts too. In Japan a flock of pigeons caused a power outage due to their poop. Drivers in Shiojiri and Matsumoto were stuck in traffic because the traffic lights stopped functioning when a buildup of bird droppings accumulated on an electricity substation insulator. The insulator short-circuited, turning off street signals. According to a spokesman for the electric company, about 3-feet of excrement had piled up causing the breakdown. As many as 25,000 traffic lights and hundreds of homes were affected.

A chicken attacked a Maui Electric Company transformer at the rental car area of the Kahului Airport causing a power outage that forced passengers to use mobile stairs to leave planes.

Inquisitive critters have been blamed for five serious power outages in 2017.

In July of that year, a squirrel caused an explosion at a substation that plunged a large section of San Diego into darkness. 45,000 homes and businesses were affected.

Also in July of 2017, a red rat snake touched a circuit breaker at a substation in Jacksonville, Florida plunging 22,000 of the area’s electric company customers into darkness. That was not the only time a snake disrupted power in Jacksonville. In fact, a snake has caused outages in that city several times. One resident commented, “The snakes are really bad during the summer.”

In December 2017 Rio Rancho, New Mexico was the site for a black out that irreparably damaged a transformer. A raccoon caused the transformer explosion and plunged about 10,000 residents into darkness. A family that lived in a house next to the transformer said, the explosion felt like an earthquake.

Nearly 6,000 customers of an electric utility company that services Puyallup, Washington suffered a black out when a rodent shorted out electrical equipment at a substation in February 2017.The incident also shut off traffic lights in the city and knocked the public library into darkness.

In March 2017, a squirrel chewed his way through the insulation of transformer bushings at a substation near the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The damage caused a power outage that rocked the entire city of Williams and other communities in the Grand Canyon region. A spokesperson for the effected electric company said that packrats, prairie dogs, birds, and squirrels often wreck havoc to the power grid there.

A baseball game being played in St. Petersburg, Florida between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Los Angeles Angels was interrupted for 40 minutes in June of this year when a bird’s nest fell on exposed electrical equipment.

According to Duke Energy, an electric utility that services many southern states, most animal blamed power outages are usually due to squirrels. The spokesman added that snakes, raccoons, and birds are also major culprits.

Duke Energy claims on its website that through July 2016, 1,000 outages that affected its customers were caused by squirrels. About 1,000 more were blamed on a variety of other animals including vultures, snakes, and raccoons.

The United States Energy Information Administration (USEIA) reports that about 13 million people nationwide were affected by animal caused power outages in 2018. The USEIA is a government agency that provides official energy statistics.

So there you have it. You know by now that every region of the United States is vulnerable to power outages due to severe weather, floods, and earthquakes. Now you also know that members of the animal kingdom are also guilty of such problems.

Therefore, you never really know when the next power outage will strike your region of the country. It is obvious that you need a back up alternative when your area is plunged into darkness. It is essential that your family has a stand-alone generator that can keep your home powered regardless of what causes the next blackout.

Today’s generators include technologies like Wi-Fi, for easy and remote control whether you are at or near home or miles away.

Having a generator will ensure that a power outage won’t cause food or medications that need to be refrigerated to spoil. A generator can also prevent frozen or damaged pipes from occurring in a major winter blackout that may not be fixed until spring.

Visit the website of AP Electric of Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin for a review of some of the best-known brands of generators including Cummins, Westinghouse, Kohler, Briggs & Stratton, Generac, and Guardian. The website also includes a generator sizing calculator and offers information on how to select the proper generator for your situation.