The Squirrel Who Ruined 21,000 Gallons of Milk

Earlier this week, in Burnaby, British Columbia, just outside Vancouver, a squirrel worked its way through some electrical equipment. It chewed and chewed enough to spark a fire on a utility pole, which cut power to 150 residents, in addition to a local cheese factory.

This was bad news for around 21,000 gallons of milk at the factory, which spoiled after sitting in the Pacific Northwest’s mild summer heat for 12 hours without cooling, according to the Vancouver Sun.

The factory is operated by Scardillo Cheese, which calls itself “British Columbia’s largest independent cheese makers,” and while the milk was lost, the cheese inside was spared, thanks to generators that kept it at the right temperature. But this is cold comfort, since the aftermath of the squirrel’s infrastructure adjustments is expected to last for a while.

“The company is estimated to lose about a week of production disposing of and cleaning up the milk,” the Sun reported Thursday. “The squirrel is still at large.”

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