Fried buzzard anyone???

WV Sawmiller · September 26, 2020, 05:27:41 PM

I was returning from delivering and installing my deer blind for my customer and when I got about 2 miles from home one of my squirrely neighbors was parked in the road looking over towards the creek. I stopped and he pointed and I asked if it was an eagle or something. Sometimes they come that far up the creek. He pointed to the power pole and said "Its a buzzard. He was smoking when I came up." Evidently one of our many local turkey vultures picked a very poor roosting site and crossed a couple of high voltage wire. He said he asked his wife and she said the power was back on. When I got home I asked my wife and she said ours had never flickered and they live above us.

I've known of snakes crossing the wires and occasionally a squirrel will knock out the power but this is the first time I've seen a buzzard/vulture do it.

sawguy21 · September 26, 2020, 05:51:27 PM

My moother saw a crow do that outside her kitchen window. All his buddys showed up and held a wake before flying off.

WV Sawmiller · September 26, 2020, 09:38:53 PM

I don't know about crows but I had diving buddy in Saudi one time who slid his kitchen open and shot a raven on the ground in his back yard with his spear gun. Evidently it was not a very clean kill and the raven was very vocal as he removed it/finished it off. His back yard had some kind of local trees that looked kind of like an acacia and had big curly bean pods on them. The ravens nested in those trees and must have fed on the beans. They never forgot and as long as Jeff lived there they would set up a racket and dive at him every time he left the house or when he came home. He could not stay outside any length of time at all.

YellowHammer · September 26, 2020, 10:14:08 PM

I'm surprised the buzzard didn't explode.

Ravens or crows routinely violating my airspace with aggression would be a good excuse to call up my crow hunting buddies and limber up the Benelli's.

samandothers · September 26, 2020, 10:15:42 PM

Looks like its a single phase line at top of pole, probably a neutral down below or near transformer. There is a fuse holder (right side with the fuse link tube and elephant ear arc suppressors) feeding maybe a transformer. The top of the fuse is energized and the bottom also. There is also a lightning arrestor (to left of fuse and mostly covered by bird) to help protect the transformer. The lightning arrestor has a ground attached to the bottom and energized wire attached to the top. You can see a ground wire going up the pole and to the bottom of the arrestor, the pole is black on each side of this wire just below the arrestor. The bird is covering the energized wire connecting to the top of the arrestor.

Something gets between the primary voltage and the grounded parts it is a crispy critter, this can also be the reason the ground wire has blackened the pole due to being the path of the fault current. Now most installs use 'animal guards' to help cover the energized parts near grounded parts. The birds unfortunate landing and long wings shorted and probably caused a recloser to operate, blink the power, to allow the arc to stop. This is very fast and sometimes not noticeable. Lots of electronics today can ride through such operations. Could be Howard your house is off a different phase or different line if no blink at your home, or maybe not noticed.

Also a possible contributing factor is the arrestor looks like it may be mounted on an L shaped bracket with the long part of the L going toward top of the pole versus heading down the pole, which is not the best practice as this bracket is connected near the bottom of the grounded arrestor. This detail is hard to see and I may be incorrect about the bracket. But was probably put in before people had clocks in their 'VCRs' that would start blinking when ever this type of issue occurred and blinked the power. We know better now. This construction puts a lot of grounded parts near the energized parts. You have the top of the arrestor at maybe 7200 v and grounded bottom near the top of the pole, arrestor bracket turned up and maybe 4" to 6" away. This lays a trap for birds or squirrels and can get snakes if they are enticed to the top of the pole by other critters.

It would be good if this was corrected to help keep this from happening the next time a critter picks the pole to run on or a bird decides to settle on it. Though it may be the same issue next house or two away! Newer installs would probably put the arrestor down on the side of the transformer and keep the grounded parts away from the top of the pole and use animal guards to cover the energized stuff near the arrestor.

WV Sawmiller · September 26, 2020, 10:39:26 PM

Sam,

Yeah but this is WV so don't expect any changes soon. I am surprised it has gone this long. The buzzards used to roost in large numbers about 1/4 mile down the creek where a guy fished a lot and threw his fish heads and such out.

Robert,

That will work over here but Ex-pats with weapons in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were severely frowned upon. :

One of my favorite memories of Saudi was the fact the the King has the title of "The Custodian of the two Holy Mosques" (Mecca & Medina -cities pretty much off limits to nearly all non-Muslims). I thought that was cool title. Kings and potentates are prime targets for ne'er do wells but Custodians of Holy Mosques are pretty universally off limits. JMHO.

RPF2509 · September 29, 2020, 12:13:01 PM

I had 3 coons do a similar trick one night. The short out produced quite the flash. First coon fried, second coon fried but still alive so I had to put him out of his misery, third coon injured and took shelter under the house growling and pacing back and forth for an hour. Wife wanted me to get him out but no way was I going under the house to face off against an angry coon. My 30-06 was a bit too much gun to touch off under the house. The fried coon had a blast hole in front and rear paws. When the power guy showed up to look at the transformer he said it was coated with coon hair. He said he'd seen a bobcat under similar circumstances.

RichTired · October 03, 2020, 04:50:49 PM

When my boys were very young they had an outside gray cat they named "Smoke".
I got woke up about 2am one morning with a power company truck in my driveway.
Once I got to the door he was backing out the driveway and left.

The next day I found out that ole Smoke had climbed up the pole, most likely to warm up on the transformer when Smoked got smoked. I was able to talk with the power company worker. He said he had to get the cat down to clear the fault so he could put the breaker back in that fed the power to my neighborhood. He left the cat at the bottom of the pole as he thought it must have been someone's pet.

So the next evening we buried ole Smoke.