It was between 10 and 11 p.m. on May 7 that 800 homes in Chapelton, Strathaven and Glassford (in Scotland) lost power.
It was also between 10 and 11 p.m. that same night that a Limousin bull named Ron decided to scratch himself on a large pole.
It was nothing new for the 4-year-old bull, who’d used the pole to reach the itch on his backside many times — especially as he was in the process of losing his winter coat.
But this time, more than just the wires shook: The transformer box got knocked off.
Power was restored by 4:00 a.m., and in the daylight, Ron’s owners at East Shawtonhill Farm in Chapelton realized what must have happened.
“We got up around 06:00 and we saw a big generator sitting at the bottom of our road, all linked up to the poles,” owner Hazel Laughton told BBC Scotland. “We thought that was a bit strange.
“We went up to feed our cows and it was my husband that noticed the transformer box had been knocked off the pole. We put two and two together and realized our bull had been scratching against the telegraph pole and he had knocked the box off the pole. All the wires were down in the field as well.”
It was a bit of a miracle that the bull hadn’t been electrocuted himself in the fiasco.
David Adams
Article URL : https://www.westernjournal.com/bull-causes-massive-power-outage-itching-bum-pole/?