***Breaking news***
By Karen Smith Welch
A tail-flicking terrorist cell knocked out power to Texas and New Mexico Xcel Energy customers 616 times in 2006.
Most were suicide missions.
"As far as I know, no squirrel ever survived the encounter with a power line," Xcel spokesman Wes Reeves said.
Amarillo customers found themselves the victims of 211 of those strikes last year.
Animalistic attacks on the power grid continued Tuesday when a suicide squirrel took out electric service to 4,564 customers in southwest Amarillo.
"The squirrel did not make it - one fatality," Reeves said.
This time, the perpetrator hit Xcel's Southwest 34th Avenue substation, shorting out the system and causing a 26-minute outage for neighborhoods within a mile in all directions, Reeves said.
"I'm always blaming my problems on a squirrel," he said. "It's kind of a utility spokesman's ongoing joke."
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