A pesky squirrel was blamed for an electrical outage Monday morning that lasted more than an hour and struck more than 1,600 Pennsylvania Power Co. customers in parts of the Shenango Valley.

The squirrel climbed into an electrical substation, causing a fuse to fail along with damaging equipment, said Randy Coleman, Mercer County area manager for Penn Power. The outage mainly hit Hermitage but also touched Sharon and Clark at 8:28 a.m., he said.