MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DON'T!

Monkey Accused of Cutting Off Entire Nation’s Power Supply

“The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages maybe expected if there is a disturbance,” a government official told the Colombo-based newspaper Daily Mirror.

Power was being restored across Sri Lanka on Monday, after officials blamed a monkey for entering a power station near the capital Colombo and triggering a nationwide blackout a day earlier. “A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system,” Kumara Jayakody, the island nation’s energy minister, told reporters. Sources at the ministry told the Colombo-based newspaper Daily Mirror that the monkey was involved in a spat with other primates after they entered the power station together. The blackout began just before midday Sunday, leaving people without power on a scorching hot day. Engineers prioritized hospitals, water treatment plants and other critical infrastructure as they worked to bring the grid serving Sri Lanka’s 22 million people back online. Some households were left to rely on generators overnight, while officials announced power cuts to some regions on Monday and Tuesday in order to manage power supply after the system outage. Toque macaque monkeys, which are only found in Sri Lanka, have come into increasing overlap with humans as their homes have been threatened by deforestation. Numbering between two and three million, they have been documented raiding villages for food. Sri Lanka has also struggled with upgrading its energy grid to cope with increasing demand—fuel shortages in 2022 forced a series of rolling blackouts. “Past governments have failed to act or upgrade the systems,” an energy ministry source told the Daily Mirror. “In fact the national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages maybe expected if there is a disturbance.”