Rampant raven throws community into mass madness

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by Morinville News Staff

Morinville – A massive power outage Monday caused mass hysteria in Morinville as residents, overfed on disaster movies and too many episodes of the Walking Dead, took to the dark streets in fear the Internet would never come on again.

All was initially in order as residents were still able to use their cell phones to connect with Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to post selfies of themselves coping with the darkness. But as phone batteries ran dead so too did the patience of a populace unable to run to popular Facebook pages like Morinville Rant and Rave to post their displeasure at the outage and to look for a common scapegoat to blame it on.

truckMorinville Mayor Lisa Holmes was unavailable for comment on the matter, having taken the week to try out more parking spots in Sturgeon County farm fields; however, a source close to the mayor’s office quickly blamed the power outage on a rampant rudderless raven colliding with a substation.

“The source of the outage has possibly been determined to be a large raven who was empowered to use his sustainable avian skills to fly from a high level and drill down into a substation, causing a possible drop in buy-in and engagement in the power grid,” the source said, adding three consultants had been hired to deal with the matter – two to conduct a feasibility study, and one to do an organizational review on the feasibility of feasibility studies. A report on the consultant’s findings is expected in 2017, just prior to the next election.

Until those reports can be concluded, the Town is sticking to the story that a raven was the source of the damage. Fortis Alberta is being less specific and would only confirm that a bird caused the outage. But one Morinville News follower disputed the raven story, commenting on Twitter that the bird “probably looks like a raven now, [but it] probably started out as a nice white seagull.”

Mass Madness in Morinville

Though the power was off for little more than an hour, paranoia spread quickly and many residents sought safe shelter at the Morinville Community Library, masking their abject fear of being without power during broad daylight by watching a group of people play Monopoly in the dark. Library Manager Isabelle Cramp could not explain why the people were playing the board game or why so many gathered around to watch them.

But a dozen calm book worms watching a board game being played was a small number to offset the hundreds who took to the streets in shear hysterics to go about their daily business of shopping, banking, and buying coffee at one of Morinville’s 57 coffee shops and espresso bars. With each entrance to a new business, people became increasingly confused as to why there was no power there either.

brennaMorinville Town Councillor Brennan Fitzgerald appears to have been the first to crack under the pressure of the power outage. “I’m boarding up the doors and windows,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “The dog is the first to go if need be.” He went on to suggest a close friend might be next to be cannibalized.

Morinville News could not confirm what became of the dog or the friend, but one reader reported Fitzgerald was seen walking the streets of Morinville rapidly moving his thumbs as if texting though he had no phone with him. The reader could not explain why he was doing this four hours after the power came back on.

Though the power outage remains somewhat of a mystery, several residents posted on the Facebook Rant and Rave page that it was nice to walk past Smith Music without that “God-Awful racket coming out of the place.”

We will continue to monitor the story for any breaking developments.

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