A couple of weeks ago, Iowa City fire trucks were called to the corner of Dubuque and Lafayette to put out a flaming utility pole. According to the report, a squirrel that came into contact with a high-power line is to blame for the conflagration. Although it’s too bad we can’t hear the squirrel’s side of the story.

Was it the squirrel’s fault that somebody invented electricity and made the wires so chewy and conveniently located? Was it the squirrel’s fault that squirrel fur is flammable? Who’s the real victim here? Animals are always blamed for getting tangled up in human activity.

Take the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. On October 8, a fire broke out that lasted two days, burned 17,450 buildings and cost 200-300 lives. And who did they blame? Daisy, Mrs. O’Leary’s old milk cow.

The legend has it that Daisy kicked over a lantern and set the barn ablaze, catching the entire city on fire, leaving 100,000 homeless. The truth is, the place was already a tinderbox. Chicago was regularly battling two or three smaller fires every day. It was only a matter of time until a fire like this occurred. Then, a few years after the fire, an alcoholic reporter for the Chicago Republic admitted he and his buddies had made up the whole story about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, who– let’s not forget– was the first casualty of the fire.

Then there was the Great Sheep Stampede of San Benito, California. In 1911 a huge flock of sheep was making its way across a major wooden bridge over a valley. Sheep are famously timid and when a passing car frightened one sheep, they all panicked and started running in unison. The synchronous motion started the wooden structure swaying and soon the whole thing collapsed. And they blamed the poor sheep.

In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland suddenly shut down. The world’s biggest particle accelerator had cost $4.75 billion to build and costs $1 billion annually to operate (which sounds like a lot, but that’s only about the same as building a really nice ballroom). Some call the 16.8-mile-long device a “doomsday machine” that has the potential to set off a nuclear chain reaction and blow up the planet. Others say that’s unlikely. Anyway, it turns out a weasel chewed into a 66-kilovolt transformer and — POP, goes the weasel! Lights out at the Large Hadron. It may have been a dark day for some Swiss physicists, but it probably wasn’t the weasel’s childhood ambition to become a living fuse for an atom smasher.

Squirrels are compulsive chewers. In 1987, a squirrel was blamed for a power outage that shut down the New York Stock Exchange. In 2012, a little gray squirrel bit through a transformer wire in Connecticut, throwing 50,000 customers into a blackout. While it might not be a major issue, police departments around the country report that squirrels regularly carry off pieces of evidence at outdoor crime scenes. Maybe the problem is that squirrels just find humans irresistible. And who can blame them?