Snake blamed for St. Louis Co. outage

BALLWIN, Mo. (AP) - A curious snake is taking the blame, and paid the ultimate price, for an outage that left nearly 24,000 suburban St. Louis homes without electricity.

KMOX Radio reports that most of the power has been restored in Ballwin, Manchester, Ellisville and Chesterfield after a snake ventured into a substation and zapped a high-voltage line Thursday morning.

Ameren Missouri officials say snakes are often a problem, especially during warm weather when they are particularly active.

The snake did not survive.

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Information from: KMOX-AM, http://www.kmox.com