An electric company spokesperson says a squirrel was responsible for an outage that took out power for nearly 2,000 Cupertino, California residents on Saturday.

Making contact with unspecified power equipment, the briefly electric squirrel "didn't survive," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

According to a 2013 New York Times story, such squirrel-sparked power outages are not uncommon:

There is an instantaneous flash of blue light. At its center is the squirrel, combusting. (In one news story, the squirrel was said to make a "popping sound" when it ignited.)

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