Used to happen at our house all the time (once every 6-12 months), we had lots of trees near power lines. There'd be a bang, a blue flash of light, a dead squirrel, and no power (or a power dip).
We had the entire power to our building knocked out by a squirrel, one of the admins got a picture of it fried on the ground after it fell. Took the power company about 4 hours get power back to the building, one would think it would be a little more difficult to knock out power.
totally off topic, but we have a pear tree in the back yard by a fence and the squirrels will take bites out of the pears before they are ripe and knock them on the ground. In over a decade we have not gotten a single pear off the tree. My wife hates them and will yell at them, she has delcared war on them (but she is losing). So they are efficient at being pests.
As a kid I was enlisted by my parents to kill squirrels living off our fruit trees, with a >1000 foot-per-second air rifle.
The sibling comment about a large water bucket and seeds sounds like a good idea, wish we had thought of it back then. The shooting of squirels was always a source of friction with the neighbors, greased yearly with free sacks of the tastiest peaches and pears ever.
