The week I rewired an entire house and found a dead squirrel in the panel

Last Tuesday I got a call to fix a partial outage in a 1950s ranch. I opened the main panel and a dead squirrel fell out on my boots. It had chewed through half the wires before it zapped itself. Took me three days and $400 in parts to replace the whole mess. The homeowner just laughed and said they wondered why the lights flickered for months. Has anyone else found something weird inside a panel like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_joel20d ago

The bird nest thing is pretty common actually (especially in older houses with outdoor panels). My uncle found a mouse family living in his panel once, they had chewed through the insulation on a main feed and it was arcing inside the wall. Took him forever to track down because the smell was so bad he thought something died in the crawlspace. The parents must have been running in and out through a gap around the conduit for weeks before he finally opened it up.

ryan_nelson20d ago

Oh man, the dead squirrel thing reminded me of something my buddy found when he bought his first house. He opened the breaker box in the basement and there was an entire bird's nest crammed in there with a dried-up baby bird still in it. The wires were all chewed up from the parents trying to get in and out, and he had to replace half the breakers and the main bus bar. Took him a weekend and he said he found bird feathers in the wall cavity for months after.