Did an iguana just turn out the lights? What happens when Florida critters zap our power

An iguana cut the power to an entire South Florida city this week.

Lake Worth Beach, just south of West Palm Beach, reported that the iguana got into a substation, and that led to a “large scale outage” in the city.

Power was out about half an hour. WPBF-Channel 25 reported that the iguana died after hitting a transformer belonging to LBW Electric Utility.

We already know iguanas can be a nuisance in South Florida. They eat our vegetation, poop on our pathways, drop frozen-stiff from trees into our yards when it gets too cold.

And they turn out our lights.

Iguanas have been such as problem in the Florida Keys that a few years ago that a local power utility, Keys Energy Services, approved spending $91,000 on iguana-proofing its equipment.

Not all iguanas get fried like the unlucky Lake Worth Beach critter.

An iguana once entered a Key West substation, got zapped by 69,000 volts of power — and lived to see another day. But the reptile’s transformer trespassing zapped Key West lights for about 10 minutes.

It’s not just iguanas that infiltrate our infrastructure. Squirrel, we’re looking at you. You pranced into a power substation in Tampa and put out power to a theme park, Busch Gardens, for a couple of hours.

Florida Power & Light uses a variety of animal guards and deterrents, such as fencing at substations and equipment covers. Since 2007, FPL has spent more than $125 million to construct or retrofit power lines to reduce the risk of bird incidents, according to Miami Herald archives.

So, the next time your lights go out, don’t be so quick to curse the electric company. You may just want to blame an iguana.