Snake rattles Legislature

Reptile causes brief power outage at Capitol

Eight years ago, a black snake worked its way into some underground electric cables at the Capitol and caused a two-hour power outage on the Tuesday of the last week of the legislative session.

This year, Ameren Missouri reported Friday, another snake got "into the switchgear causing it to short out."

The species of snake wasn't identified this year.

But this time the outage lasted about 30 seconds, then the Capitol's generators kicked in - avoiding the lengthy outage experienced on May 13, 2009.

Both outages occurred during the noon hour.