Not long ago, I was sitting at my computer on a perfectly still summer morning when I heard a strange buzz. Morgan Mandel and Rascal Suddenly, the computer, the lights, and all the electricity shut down. My first reaction was to check whether our house was the only one off the grid. I opened the front door, stepped out, and saw a number of my neighbors already outside. One asked if she was the only one without power. That gave me my answer. I called the electric company, only to learn the problem was being investigated. Feeling curious, I decided to take my dog for her second walk of the day, this time around the neighborhood. Maybe I could discover the cause of the outage.  Rascal and I headed across the street and up the block, where one of her doggie friends happened to be in her fenced yard. As the dogs greeted each other, I spoke to the owner, who said she'd heard the culprit was a tree on a power line. I wondered if she was correct.  I spo...