Blackout by Boa

A six-foot boa constrictor slithered out of the Panama jungle one night last week, writhed up a high-tension-line tower along the Panama Railroad track, then glided onto a cable. Forty-four thousand volts surged through the serpent in a whoosh of flame, cremated it within two watch-ticks. As the boa’s charred body tumbled down, lights blinked off for a quarter hour along the Pacific side of the Canal Zone. Power failed for three minutes at the great locks of the Panama Canal, then surged back as automatic emergency equipment went to work. It was the Canal Zone’s second boa-made blackout within a fortnight.*-

*In the past year Canal Zone electricians have also found the charred remains of kinkajous, opossums, sloths and monkeys along their wires. A few years ago two parakeets exchanged what has been called history’s hottest kiss on the trans-isthmus high-tension line. The parakeets, one on a grounded wire and the other on a live one, touched bills, doused the lights in the Zone. Linemen found them next morning—two tiny fried fowl with bills still touching.