Troubleshooting job resulted in the discovery of this poor varmint.







The switches the mouse was caught between were on two different circuits with opposite polarity, so 240V was possible here...

The problem was unrelated to the mouse.

[This message has been edited by sparky66wv (edited 04-02-2003).]

How did the mouse get into the box? No cover plate?

Mice can fit through VERY small openings. Thats got to suck!

Hey! Why aren't the switches grounded?

I have seen that before. Once in a meter socket where there was a whole family of them all got zapped. It was time for a new service.

Speaking of rodents, how is it that squirrels can eat the insulation off romex untill you're left with 3 bare pieces of copper? They don't die and must enjoy it because they continue to do it. I once opened a wall and found 6 feet of bare wire that was romex along with nesting material.

Re: grounding the switches--the center one looks grounded at least, can't see the ECG terminal on the others.

I've seen a mouse get into a light box with a porcelain keyless fixture somehow, and that was in Chicago with a conduit system. Zapped, burnt, and blowing out bulb after bulb till we checked it out.

I found a birds nest with newly hatched birds in a outdoor box--CBs and GFI receptacles at a campground. That actually happened a couple times, found numerous eggs, nests, etc. They came in through an open KO on the bottom. Actually I prefer an opening on the bottom to allow water to drain out, but not to let critters in. Wasp nests are the worst.

I found one of those things dead, with the tail end hanging out of the top of a trough that had a missing k/o, in a juice plant a few years back. I removed the cover and found the creature still had his jaws wrapped around a live 480 volt motor feed wire. YUCK!!!!!!

The only "critter" I have come across was a mouse that made a home out of the buildings Walker Duct system. I was doing some demo and he was permanently attached to the hot terminal of a receptacle.

ThinkGood,
Looks like that little fella's had a big day!

Would you say he got "phased out"


Ah, sorry , long day

Glenn

Crazy critters up this way Virgil, besides the mice & rats:
Had a cat across buss (phase to phase) in 4160 switchgear; now that was not a pretty site.....

Found a snake in a pool panel, across the buss, 120/240 volt, cooked good, and the smell was brutal......

When I worked the inner cities, it used to be roaches, mice, rats, etc...ya didn't wear pants with cuffs, if ya know what I mean. And yes, the bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, etc, are a pain (in the light poles and fixtures)

John

I WORK IN A CORN/ALCHOL PROCESS PLANT AND THE CLEAN UP CREWS COULD DO A LITTLE BETTER TO SAY THE LEAST SO I SEE ALOT OF RATS AND MICE(BOTH DEAD AND ALIVE) BUT THE BEST ONE I HAVE SEEN WAS A CAT ON THE PRIMARY OF THE 13,800 VOLT TRANFORMER ON THE POWER COMPANY'S LINES. HE(OR SHE, HARD TO TELL) DID NOT HAVE MUCH TIME TO PLAY BEFORE THE PLANT WENT DARK. JUST HAPPENED TO COME AT A TIME WHEN THE TURBINES WERE BEING OVERHAULED. I THINK THE CLIENT WOULD HAVE LOVED TO RESURECT THAT ONE JUST TO KILL IT AGAIN.

i see plenty of them and i have a nest of mice in large diesel geneator and blew the feild wireing out it was a mess to clean up (btw it was big 3 mw unit !!)but my best one to see the worst one i know it is gross to say this but a pair of cat in heat and fell on the transfomer and i really cant tell the rest of it here but it was a mess to clean up and the other job i have to work not too long ago is a bee hive in air cooled transfomer and it coook all of them when the transfomer engerized you can smell the honey but other smell forget it i end up replace the whole thing i cant clean it out all the tap connetions is shot sorry i dont have a photo and last year just dont laugh at me or think it is crazy but i have a call to replace the bathroom gfci it was stinking i replace it twice and found out it was a gross part that a cat did took a piss on it !! and kill it dont blame me why but the cat did it ( please keep a peace in here and dont yell at my ear i allready deaf)

merci marc

guess he'd rather fight than switch?

Once had a large rat that fell across the terminals of a 4000A ACB, man it stunk!
Knocked a whole Factory out, too.
Don't ask me how it got in there, but it sure was BIG!.

Guys,
A couple of years back there was a Topic posted, that had a site on it, that had a squirrel caught up in some High Voltage Lines, there were other pics, too.
Can anyone please remember what the URL of that site was, or the name of the thread?.
Wouldn't mind having a look at it again!.

A few years ago in Silicon Valley a squirrel got into a substation and shorted something taking out half the town.

BTW, to clean up cat pee, use a bleach solution where the cat peed. This will counteract the annonia in the cat pee. Cats will pee in places that smell like ammonia.

I worked in movie theaters for years...lovely aroma, isn't it?

Is the mouse UL listed for use in a switch box.

I worked at a feed lot and had lots of problems with mice, rats and squirrels. We lost controls daily due to mice getting in the control panels. Old 480v stop starts and there would always be several dead mice besides the one that tripped the breaker or blew the fuse. Always smelled like burnt fur. Rod

worst one I ever had was a family of skunks in a po-co transformer.
The stink was undescribable.

Trumpy,
Though I did not get pics, I've had outages due to squirrels, birds, snakes, and all manner of vermin.

Fires caused by these are not uncommon, the worst was a raccoon that burned nearly an acre before I could get into replace the fuses.

Not unusual to see birds on separate insulators begin pecking at each other and end up crispy critters. After the 'coon the worst fire I've ever had to rebuild lines for was one where the birds started it, musta been at least 30 carcasses with that one.

Nothing will shift the stink of cat's P-one hundred-and-fifty-five, except burning the affected item, in my experience. Tom-P155 is the worst formula, they mark out territory with horizontal bursts. It ain't ammonia, it's some sort of hormone/pheremone mix.
I quite like tom-cats, and we used to get 'em spayed before they reached pubity to stop the squirting behavior. It stops them going off on two-year sex-jaunts too, then coming back half-dead and covered in battle scars, fleas and mange.

As to mouses, I was in the shop one day, being real quiet reading some stuff, and a mouse emerged right by me, between two oak boards. Aftewards, I measured the gap it came through. Just a tad under 3/8" (0.375"). How do they do it- dislocate their joints, or what?

Alan

They are just ghost mice, they can go thru walls and doors.

So, your attrition of my position is; it was all an apparition and a visitation of my imagination? But the condition of the fission in the partition, within the limits of precision of my vision, leads me with derision to determine that the vermin that came squirmin' past the burl in the purlin was not a creation of my imagination, but a small, flat, ( at a pinch, no thicker than 3/8 of an inch ) rat!.
Now, I can take with some vexation, the notion of all its limbs in dislocation, but the ghoulies too?- ( Blimey!- will only a Limey timely catch the slimy joke in that? ).
I come to the conclusion that here, there's some confusion, and a question of another dimension that begs a further mention!

Alan

I'm off down the bar!

ROFL!!!