Loose animal update

Well the very bad news is first. 

A cat is the reason 7,500 customers in New Orleans lost power on Monday morning, according to Entergy.

"A cat got into a substation that feeds parts of Uptown, Central City, Mid-City, and the CBD, and caused a flash when it came into contact with our equipment," Entergy said in a statement.

As of 10:20 a.m. Entergy said power has been restored to all customers. Outages spanned areas of Uptown, Central City, Mid-City and the Central Business District.

"It is unusual for a cat to get into a substation; generally, squirrels and other small animals find their way in," the company said. "Entergy installs protective devices to help keep animals out of our equipment not only to avoid power outages, but also to keep animals out of harm’s way.

"Sometimes, however, they are able to make their way around the protective devices, and when this happens, the animals unfortunately do not survive contact with high-voltage equipment."

So that is sad. Between this poor guy and Valerio, 2018 is shaping up to be the most tragic cat year in recent memory. 

But cats aren't the only animals going their own way in 2018.  Consider also the monkeys. 

A monkey went missing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette New Iberia Research Center on Saturday (Sept. 15), according to the university on social media.

The UL-Lafayette Facebook page stated Sunday that staff at the New Iberia Research Center became aware a monkey was missing due to a cage failure on Saturday. The monkey is a young Rhesus macaque weighing approximately 12 pounds, UL-Lafayette stated. The university reported the monkey is part of a breeding group and carries no transmissible disease.

It's that last sentence that reassures me most. No transmissible diseases here, folks. Nope. Nothing to worry about with this monkey. Please go about your business.  That makes me feel better every time we hear it. And we do hear it more often than you might think. Back in May a similar escape occurred at the Tulane Primate Research Center in Covington. Long time followers of this blog will know it was far from the first such incident.

So, yeah, exploding cats and loose rage monkeys. Everywhere else it's just Monday. I also heard a story this morning about large red "tropical looking" bird flying around Central City. The details on that one are sketchy but keep an eye out.