Kennett business offers ‘Sparky Special’ after snake causes total power outage

KENNETT, Mo. (KBSI) – A little reptile left a big impact on a small Southeast Missouri town.

Late last night on June 24, 2025, the entire town of Kennett experienced a total blackout, and the reason is a little more bizarre than what you’d think. 

Jamie Chitester is the CEO of Kennett Board of Public Works he says as soon as the power went out him and other city leaders immediately started investigating the issue and alerting the public of the issue as power went out a little after 9 pm. 

“There was a snake that had gotten into the bus side of the breaker which threw the breaker to the entire town” says Chitester.

The town was without power for around an hour, but with it being one of the hottest days of the year and no lights anywhere many residents say it was a scary and hot experience for them. 

When all power went out, residents running fire work stands rushed to their stands since security cameras weren’t working and business owners sprang into action.

Amber Long is the Manager at B2Q BBQ and says no power could cause big problems for them. 

“So when I figured out it was like a town wide thing, I called Bryan which is the owner and was like hey we’ve got food smoking on the grill we’ve got to get our generator up and going or were going to lose a lot of food” says Long.

The rat snake that caused some big problems sadly didn’t make it and was nicknamed sparky.

Long says this prompted the sparky special! 

“We’re just super grateful because without them doing their jobs we wouldn’t be here today to be able to serve everybody food so me and Bryan again were talking this morning and were like what can we do to kind of show them that they’re appreciated because there have been some ugly comments about them on Facebook and stuff” says Long. “So, we were like let’s just have a sparky special! Because we saw where the snakes name was Sparky Mcsizzle I think it was. So we were like ok, sparky special anybody from the Kennett board of public works come and grab ya, some food today and we’ll get it to you at a discounted price.” 

B2Q BBQ offered 10% off for all Public Works Employees today as a thank you and offers 10% off every day for veterans and nurses.