Snake causes thousands to lose power in southeast GA city

STATESBORO, Ga. — A Georgia city was without power for more than an hour. The culprit: a sneaky snake.

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Tuesday night, the utility company, Excelsior EMC shared that its entire register substation was without power.

At that time, it appeared the problem was on the transmission line side and not the company’s side.

According to the Statesboro Herald, nearly 2,200 customers were without power for over an hour.

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An hour later, residents’ power was restored just after 10 p.m.

The company said the cause of the outage was when a snake made contact with equipment in the substation, causing the power transformer to open.

Transgard said squirrels, snakes and birds are a leading cause of power disruptions in the U.S.

A snake slithering over a live wire can cause an energy surge that could cause an automatic shutdown, Critterguard reports.

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