Conspiracy theory? I think not.

Today, as I was lying on my bed recuperating from a hard morning in the garden, I was struck by an online news article that sounded very odd. The headlines read, "Squirrel to blame for power outage." 


So, I'm thinking, "Really?" Visions of a fluffy-tailed rodent in a ski mask, dressed in black, slinking stealthily into the substation fill my brain. Tiny black gloves holding a miniature flashlight sweep the light beam across the room, making sure the coast is clear. Deciding which piece of critical equipment he can damage to affect the most power customers will take cunning expertise.


This got me questioning the whole idea of blame being placed on a rodent with the brain the size of a walnut. So, I did a little research. First, I found out a little more on their habits: "In the summer squirrels are most active two to three hours after sunrise, then they'll rest in the afternoon (no doubt planning their devious power-grid-stopping scheme). Resuming activity again two hours before sunset (to carry out said plans with precision-accuracy). The squirrel will retire to its nest well before dark,  and will rarely leave the nest in the dark (to further establish their alibis)". Yes, the parenthetical comments are mine, but read on.


Next, I thought maybe my imagination was getting a little out of hand so I decided to verify the credibility of this news article. What I discovered was shocking. In fact, the, um, facts were so overwhelming that I had to create an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of them all. What I discovered was that in the past nine days, in 10 different states and two Canadian Provinces, squirrels were responsible for power-outages affecting 56,530 people! Many of these occurrences even happened on the same day!


What I think we have here is an organized conspiracy among the order "Rodentia". These little guys are planning complex strategies to inconvenience thousands of humans, no doubt in order to deliver a little payback for the invention and deployment of "squirrel-proof" bird feeders. Sales of these feeders has increased every year. It is all in the facts.


Of course, a lot of these squirrel missions are fatal to the perpetrator. Yes, now they are little hairy martyrs for their followers. And how many followers are there? "There are over 365 species of squirrels in seven families."  I think this means that there are about one hundred billion. And this isn't the worst of it!  A squirrel's teeth grow continuously...