It was a year of vermin wreaking havoc. This past February, a squirrel chewed through a power line, shorting out the electrical feed to Tampa’s main water plant. The power outage, which put the city at risk for widespread contamination, led to officials requiring a 48-hour water boil. The mandate sent Tampa hurtling into a Third World panic. Yuppies were up in arms on Facebook and Twitter because they couldn’t comfortably rinse off their Aveda body wash and had to flee to their parents in Pinellas and other nearby counties to shower. Later, in April, a more heroic vermin-martyr invoked the cheers of children. The poor critter was electrocuted, causing an outage at Lavoy Exceptional Center, Jefferson High and Roland Park magnet during FCAT testing
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2013.