CRAWFORD COUNTY - Like many, the offices of the Crawford County Independent newspaper were without power for a time in the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 28.

“An evil squirrel got into the substation in Seneca and took out both circuits,” according to Scott Reigstad, an Alliant Energy spokesperson. “It wasn’t a planned outage on our part, and we’re not sure about the squirrel.”

The outage started at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 28, and lasted until 8:40 a.m. Gays Mills, Soldiers Grove, Ferryville, Mt. Sterling, Seneca, Eastman and Lynxville were without power during this time.

Reigstad said that the outage resulted in 1,072 area residents losing power for about 40 minutes.