LEWISTON – A squirrel on a power line was blamed for a brief outage that left parts of Bates College in the dark Monday afternoon.

Central Maine Power Co. officials made quick work of the problem after lights were reported out on Campus Avenue about 12:45 p.m.

CMP officials said a squirrel shorted out a line that feeds power to the college campus. Power was restored at 1:50 p.m.