Bird cause of morning power outage in Cape Girardeau

A bird that shorted out a lightning arrestor on a transformer was the cause of a midmorning power outage for 307 AmerenUE customers in Cape Girardeau.

AmerenUE spokesman Mike Cleary said customers in the vicinity of Kingshighway, Kingsway Drive and Hopper Road were without electricity from 10:11 to 10:35 a.m. Wednesday. Cleary said the incident was one of nine power outages Wednesday caused by an animal for customers in Illinois and Missouri.

"While the number of outages themselves aren't high, the number of outages caused by animals in one day is above normal," Cleary said. "We've had a good number caused by snakes lately."

On Monday a snake slithered up a power pole in Hannibal, Mo., knocking out electricity downtown and in another area of town, the Associated Press reported. Though the snake received 13,800 volts of electricity, the animal survived.

On May 13 a black snake got into the underground electric cables near the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo., causing two cables to short out, the AP reported. The snake was electrocuted and the state legislators spent about an hour in the dark.

House members worked in the dark, speaking loudly to make up for a lack of microphones and casting roll votes verbally instead of electronically.