Wild Turkey Causes Power Outage

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The dinner table isn’t the only dangerous spot for turkeys during Thanksgiving weekend. It turns out that high voltage power lines don’t do them much good either.

A power outage occurred in the Cooper Street neighborhood of Overton on Saturday night, Nov. 27 after a wild turkey had a tangle with powerlines in the area and ended up with a shocking experience, according to Overton Power District (OPD5) officials.

“When I saw the communication come out on what caused the outage, I thought it had to be a mistake,” laughed OPD5 spokesman Keith Buchhalter. “I thought it must have been that a truck caused the outage and that auto-correct had changed it to turkey. I mean, what are the chances on Thanksgiving weekend?”

But it was no mistake. Apparently one of the wild turkeys that frequent the Cooper Crossing neighborhood had somehow made contact with the neutral on an overhead power line in the area. This caused an arc which ended up zapping the bird and putting the neighborhood in the dark for a little while.

“That is not the way that we usually cook a turkey at OPD5,” Buchhalter joked. “But sometimes these things happen.”

The outage only affected a small number of customers, Buchhalter said. Crews responded to the problem immediately and quickly found the still smoking cause of the outage beneath the lines.

Within about half an hour power was restored to all customers, Buchhalter said.