O. T. Animal Disasters

We had a plant evacuated when a Moth had flown in front of a fire detection camera. The reflection off its wings triggered the camera. The plant shutdown and the sirens started blasting. We all headed out and started looking for fire. After it was all clear and false alarm. We found the video tape. Yes a VHS tape. It was an old camera that had an analog output. What we found was the moth covered up a large percentage of the lens and the camera saw the white as fire.

A 5hp scrap conveyor stopped working. The contactor was pulled in. The motor was pulling very little amps. We went to the motor and started pulling the cover. There was a snake bleeding and wrapped up in the v-belts. It had thrown the belts off the motor. I moved a little quicker then I usually do when the snake let me know it was there.

Engine block casting plant in Windsor Ontario. There was a master control relay (think ancient hinged at bottom with open contacts) that controlled all the conveyors. What we later decided was a dried out mosquito carcass was flattened out between the run contacts.

I worked for Westinghose, and we use to joke that the boss would drive around late at night and release raccoons into substations to create business.

Of could that was just a JOKE!

Not a plant, but a US Naval base. A dock rat caused multiple ships to go to security alert. He decided he didn't like the cold drizzle one morning and climbed into a nice warm substation, taking down several piers power, including the carrier piers.


When we lost power, the ship went on security alert until power was restored. I was manning the emergency generator switchboard in a t-shirt, shorts, and shower shoes (flip flops)until the next duty section was let on board. Of course this happened on the weekend, just before duty section changeover, and the oncoming duty section was stuck on the pier unable to help.

My story won't win for "smallest animal", but it's a good one nonetheless.

Had an old pulp mill shut down with dozens and dozens of motor overload trip alarms. Whatever didn't trip, stopped because something around it had tripped. We figured there must have been a power surge or some other funny business and set about working through the various switchrooms pressing reset buttons. Once all the alarms cleared, we went up to the control room and gave the operators the all clear to restart. First motor that restarted tripped on overload. So did a dozen more. Hmmmmm...

It was about then that we noticed that roughly 1/3 of the lights in the building were out. Slowly, something in my brain went "ping".


We were missing a phase to the building. At this point I stopped, and wondered if this might be related to the other radio chatter I'd heard that morning from a different crew onsite, regarding a rodent that had met a rather unpleasant demise. It had crawled into a DB in an administration building, squeezed in between the insulated busbar section down the middle, and started munching. Eventually it cremated itself, but not before it had blown the fuse supplying the administration building, and also the upstream fuse supplying the whole switchroom that supplied both the administration building and the pulp mill. So much for circuit discrimination.


But the funniest thing about this was what the guys found when they removed the escutcheon. Have you ever seen the episode of Mr Bean where he decides to paint his loungeroom by wrapping everything in newspaper, sticking a firework in a tin of paint, and then leaving the room? Except, at the last second, someone comes in to retrieve their hat. The results are a perfectly white room, except for the silhouette of a man reaching for a hat on one wall.

Well, that's exactly what the back of this escutcheon looked like. Completely charred black, but with the perfect white silhouette of a rat, right down to the ears and tail. It was so ridiculous that it ended up mounted on the workshop wall as an art feature.

I once helped a client replace an HMI at the wastewater treatment facility of a pork processing plant. When removing the defective HMI, a couple of dead flies fell out. I didn't bother to investigate whether the flies actually caused it to fail, but it's probable! When I returned my office, my co-workers told me to go home just after I entered the door because I smelled so bad!

a couple of dead flies fell out

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Anyone complaining about old jokes should remember that I am old. 'That was just a couple of bugs in the system'.