A foolishly-adventurous squirrel was both the cause and a victim early Friday morning when about 4,000 Baraboo residents lost power for 50 minutes.

The blackout affected downtown Baraboo where lights and air conditioning went dead at about 7:47 a.m. Electrical appliances came back to life at 8:41 as power returned.

Baraboo Deputy Fire Chief Steve Pointon said firefighters were called to a power substation near the Alliant Energy offices on Vine Street, the source of the blackout. They found a fire had been sparked when a squirrel caused a short circuit on high-voltage electrical equipment. However, power company workers extinguished it before firefighters arrived, he said.

"The fire was out," he said. "The wires on top of the transformer were all burned out."

Pointon said they immediately left the scene to help a person trapped in an elevator at the Donahue Terrace senior apartments downtown.

The blackout affected about 4,000 people in the city of Baraboo, said Steve Schultz, a spokesman for Alliant Energy. The short circuit caused by the squirrel triggered devices designed to protect the power lines called "re-closures" to trip in a manner similar to fuses or circuit breakers in a home. Alliant crews were able to re-route the flow of electrical power around the damaged substation within about 45 minutes and return service to darkened areas of the city before the substation was actually back in operation, he said.

Schultz said the damage was of a relatively routine nature and would be repaired quickly.

By mid afternoon a crew of Alliant line technicians had replaced damaged parts and were making preparations to bring the substation back online.

Lead line tech Gary Fenske said workers were inside the Alliant offices when the squirrel somehow got past a barbed wire-topped fence and onto copper conductors atop a piece of equipment within the substation. The animal became an electrical conduit itself and the sound of the resulting 12,000-volt electrical arch could be heard inside the building,