ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Dead Animals

This one was chasing people around. That's my wife with the tape.

I remember a job on an old Victorian place a few years ago. As soon as I opened up the hatch into one section of the attic there was an awful smell.

By the time I'd crawled along to the end I found the source -- The remains of a huge and recently deceased rat, its jaws still firmly clamped around the 240V cable it had bitten into.

From an old ECN thread.

Old movie houses...need I say more? I can smell a dead rat about a mile away now...

I had a job one summer doing startups of controls and switchgear on low head hydro-generators installed at irrigation ditches in Idaho. In roughly 1/2 of the 30 odd systems we worked on, there were rattlesnakes waiting for us when we opened the enclosure doors to the switchgear. Rats would tunnel under the pad, chew through the PVC conduit, make a nest in the switchgear and that would attract the snakes. The first one was a big shock, I opened the door and immediately heard the rattle. The snake struck at me but I was a little out of range. Just about wet myself. The 15th one was no big deal though, we learned to expect it.

Snakes, racoons and cats in crawl spaces, rats and mice in switchgear, pigeons in HVAC duct work, but the worst (for me) black widows in pad mount xformers.

New job site old pit for working on farm eqipment full of brush and trash about half way through cleaning the pit out a field mouse goes up my leg and then back down!
I let out a scream that I was so glad that know one was around to here me. I laughed and then went and cleaned my pants!!!