The Great Power Mystery Solved by a Tiny Lightbulb

It was a late summer night. Behind my house, people were busy digging.
My son dug with me, my daughter held the emergency lights.
My wife kept running to the fuse box and back.
Meanwhile, I tried to rule out all possibilities of the problem.
All were looking for cables, sockets and faulty appliances.
The lights had already been removed from exterior walls. Power had been cut in several places. To the gazebo and to the garden lights in front of the house the cables had been disconnected. That could not be the problem….

One cable was eventually rigorously cut itself, ruling out the entire backyard as a possible cause!
Throughout the house, of course, we had also pulled out all the appliances, of that one power group, one by one and turned the power back on.
Over and over again the same fuse would blow. Maddening!

It was already pitch dark and 0:30 in this warm night.
There was nothing for it but to continue this adventure in daylight.

At strategic points in the house, we laid extension cords. So that at least the telephone, the Internet, the freezer and the refrigerator would work again.
After three hours of searching, we gave up for the day.
The garden was a havoc and I could hardly get to sleep.
I was exhausted and desperate.
I kept checking possibilities in my mind, what on earth could it be?

Had the roots of a tree “eaten” the cables, had a cable been hit while hoeing the garden?
In the morning I stood with a cup of coffee in hand, looking at all the extension cords. A jumble of “life-saving” connections. What a chaos!
I wondered if we would ever find the problem.