Rats!!!

[valerie]

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - About 9,500 Riverside residents found themselves in the dark after a rat chewed through power equipment at a substation.

The rodent had to gnaw through two barriers before it reached the 12,000-volt equipment that it shorted out on Tuesday night, Public Utilities deputy director Steve Badgett said.

"We found him. What was left of him," Badgett said.

The rat made it to the live wires despite traps and rat poison placed in the substation, he said.

Some 1,100 customers went without power until early Wednesday morning. Badgett said he braced for the worst when he realized that residents lost their power just as the semifinalists of "American Idol" were to perform on television.