How much wood could a woodpecker peck if that wood was protecting electrical poles?
It turns out, a lot. So much so that, according to RTE, woodpeckers have been knocking out power in a Irish town.
“At issue here is woodpeckers. They have been damaging our poles on the network,” says Ireland’s ESB electricity company. “Our colleagues are replacing these wooden poles with a composite pole in order to prevent woodpecker damage going forward.”
Said replacement will require further outages, although those will be planned to “[minimize] the disruption to the customer,” as opposed to the woodpeckers, who just knock out power as they please.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard woodpeckers were causing the issue,” says county representative Joe Cooney. “When I told affected residents they asked; is this a joke?”
While Woody Woodpecker is certainly known for laughing, this woodpecker issue is, in fact, not a joke.