Outage

Monday I was sitting in my apartment doing homework, and I heard a small explosion outside, immediately after which the lights went out. I knew what had happened- there is a transformer close by, and squirrels have been climbing into it and causing it it to blow. It usually takes a few hours for the power company to come out and set everything right again.
I couldn't finish my school work in the dark, so I got dressed for work in the dark and decided to head in early. Going down the stairs to leave, I ran into two maintenance men with flashlights talking to my downstairs neighbor (This is the old woman who yells to her cat Rusty at all hours. 12:30 am: "RUUUUUUUSSSSSTTTTTYYY! RUSTY! RUSTY GET IN HERE.")
"Squirrel blew the transformer again?" I asked.
"Yeah, you got it," said the first maintenance guy.
"Yes, but it didn't kill him!" said the old woman.
The first maintenance man looked at his feet. The other shook his head and mouthed the word "Dead."
"That's wonderful," I said, and headed to work.
"That's wonderful," is something I say to kids a lot. "That's wonderful," and it's counterpart, "I'm sorry to hear that," are what you say when presented with a situation you don't know how to respond to. A kid holds up a picture of blue and black scribbling that she is obviously proud of? "That's wonderful!" A kid comes to tell you that Brian is going down the slide backwards, and you don't feel like going into an explanation of tattling and why it's a bad idea? "I'm sorry to hear that." A crazy old woman who loves animals a little bit too much mistakenly believes that a squirrel survived electrocution by a transformer? "That's wonderful!"