Turkey shorts power line, cutting electricity for 4,000 homes in Sacramento, utility district says

What better way to say it’s Christmas Eve in Sacramento? Cloudy skies, cool temperatures and a hint of roasted turkey.

A wild turkey made a fatal connection with a power line Sunday afternoon in south Sacramento, briefly cutting power to more than 4,000 customers of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

SMUD said 4,248 homes and businesses of the Little Pocket and Greenhaven neighborhoods, among others, lost power about 12:15 p.m. A spokesperson for the utility said a member of the gobbling, parading and, sometimes, ornery game species was to blame and that crews were quickly dispatched to fix the glitch.

“There was a turkey in the line that crews are working to repair quickly and safely,” the spokesperson said. It was not clear what would happen to the bird of fray.

SMUD officials said power would be rerouted to another circuit in the affected areas and that most people would be back online by 1:20 p.m.

Those details appear on SMUD’s recently improved outage page, officials said: “Now customers can search an outage by address and get status updates through the restoration process.”

More than 300 people also called SMUD about the outage, according to that outage page.