Critter story 1:
Troubleshooting a short found that a length of romex in the wall had high resistance phantom like load, and intermittant short? Wierd! Not quite open, not quite closed, and wierd load? So the only real way to fix it was open the wall, and re-do this short link, so I did. Found a rat maybe a week dead, with scorched jaws locked on to the romex. The skin of the romex he was trying to peel off to build its nest was burning back from the arcing.
Critter story 2:
Putting plugs at old remote farm house, myself and another guy are taking tuns under the house in a tight crawl space. One drills the hole, the other pushes the wire up. Near the end of the day, one more plug to go, I'm upstairs tapping on the floor for the other guy to find the hole. He comes over the radio, "I found the hole, and theres a snake here." - "A snake?" - "Yes, a snake!" He waits for a while, anbd then tells me the snake is either sleeping or dead, not sure. He's gonna try to slip the wire by the snake into the hole, and get out of there. Then I hear the rattling through the floor, and scuffling. It settles down and I'm calling the guy on the radio, he then springs from the crawl space hole in the closet. "Thats it I thing that enough for today!" He then tells me of his fight with a 4' rattle snake. He tried to slip the wire past the snake, and it woke up, bit the wire, and started toward him, so he slapped it with the romex a few times, and made a hasty retreat. Left his radio, and the rest of his tools right there. We called out Animale control, who said no way they were going down there to get it, "you'll have to wait for Spring for it to come out of hibernation, it will eventually come out." Customer had to wait almost four months to get the last outlet, and my buddy to get his tools back.
