Only in Canada.
A pesky beaver chewed through a wooden electrical pole over the weekend, knocking out power in the city of Prince Albert, the third largest in Saskatchewan, Canada, according to a local report.
Residents of the city, as well as those in northern Saskatchewan, were left in the dark for about an hour Sunday after the beaver gnawed its way through the pole, allowing for strong winds to ultimately bring it down, CBC News reported.
“This was one of our larger wooden power poles and there was ample evidence of beaver damage at the base of it, so beavers had been chewing away at it,” said Jonathan Tremblay, a spokesman for SaskPower, the principal electric utility company in Saskatchewan.
“It was a bit of a domino effect,” Tremblay added, according to the news outlet.
Animals are responsible for about one third of the power outages experienced by SaskPower customers, but beavers aren’t common culprits, Tremblay said.
“Usually, it’s birds flying into substations, or squirrels chewing at things they shouldn’t,” he said. “Beavers are fairly rare.”