Squirrels Are the Number One Culprit for Animal Damage to Aerial Fiber

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190606_squirrels_number_one_culprit_for_animal_damage_to_aerial_fiber/

by pencilingin • 7 years ago

56 55 7 years ago

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inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

Now waiting for the news item, 'Little old homeless lady disconnects internet with squirrel army.'

alex_anglin• 7 years ago

It's already begun: https://cybersquirrel1.com/

Although the squirrels seem to be taking it upon themselves...

inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

That is genius, but I note it doesn't disprove my 'little old lady who lives in park' theory, it may just be mapping the extents of it.

calcifer• 7 years ago

Politicians and greedy monopolistic companies are the number one culprit for aerial fiber in the first place, so...

village-idiot2• 7 years ago

... Do you not want Internet? It seems like you don't want the internet.

ncmncm3• 7 years ago

Other greedy companies are planning to loft thousands of satellites to compete with the aerial fibers and, better, co-ax cable.

More power to them, astronomy notwithstanding.

Y-bar• 7 years ago

cybersquirrel1.com strikes again!

jimhefferon• 7 years ago

Also for ham radio antennas. I hate them.

et2o• 7 years ago

Networking programming errors should be called squirrels instead of bugs.

deepsun• 7 years ago

Could you make cable that is very untasty for squirrels, but environment-friendly otherwise?

knodi123• 7 years ago

licorice data lines?

dreamcompiler4• 7 years ago

Probably. Part of the problem is that many modern electrical insulation materials--in an effort to be eco-friendly--are made of soy derivatives. When such materials are used for wires in car engines, as they frequently are in Japanese cars, rats consider them dinner. I live in a rural area, and I've spent many $K on this problem.

Whether there's an equally "natural" material that rodents don't like is a question that should be researched.

ncmncm3• 7 years ago

They could put capsaicin in the insulation, if they cared.

That wouldn't help against Australian parrots but rodents are the clearly bigger problem, most places.

thrownaway9542• 7 years ago

all wires should be buried. not only squirrels and other critters, but hurricanes and other acts of nature cause major problems. i know that most cities have started doing this for aesthetics than anything.

legulere2• 7 years ago

High voltage cables still make more sense overground, because of higher costs and because they hardly fail.

dreamcompiler4• 7 years ago

But when they do, it's usually because of storms, trees, and...squirrels.

bitbckt• 7 years ago

Until they do and burn down towns in Northern California...

chrisseaton2• 7 years ago

But they can ruin the beauty of our natural landscapes.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/15/national-gri...

TimTheTinker• 7 years ago

I know distribution lines are routinely buried, but can transmission lines be buried?

js2• 7 years ago

It's really expensive, time consuming, and those wires are still susceptible to backhoes.

darkpuma2• 7 years ago

It's not just the upfront cost either, but once you bury the cables all future cable upgrades and replacements will be more expensive too.

Burying cables nevertheless makes sense in some places, particularly dense areas. For areas with low population density (most of the land mass of the US for instance) it's totally cost prohibitive.

AWildC1822• 7 years ago

I think the joke goes:

What three things would you bring with you if you were stuck on a deserted island?

A length of fiber, a shovel, and a margarita.

Bury the fiber and drink the margarita while briefly waiting for a backhoe to come dig up the fiber.

mcv2• 7 years ago

You need to make sure backhoes know where the cables are. It works very well in Netherland. Except for high voltage long distance power, everything goes underground.

Although in urban areas, I'd expect it to make more sense to have spacious tubes underground through which all the cables are easily pulled, so you don't have to dig everything up all the time. Maybe they already do that; I'm not sure.

chrisseaton2• 7 years ago

You must already have conduit underground. You aren’t running water and sewerage on elevated lines are you, unless you’re very rural.

tzs3• 7 years ago

Backhoes cause damage in a small area, and generally it should be possible to notify the cable owner and for them to get a repair crew dispatched quickly.

A big storm can take out overhead cables in hundreds of places in a short time. It can take a day or more to even find all the damage, and you can have a lot more places that need repair than you have repair crews, so it can take days for some places to even get a repair crew on site.

Also, a storm that takes out overhead fiber or other telecom cables often also takes out power. I believe that in many areas the services that own non-power cables that share poles with power cables are not allows to touch anything on the pole until the power company restores power. That can further slow down scheduling telecom repairs.

thrownaway9542• 7 years ago

you are a moron if you are digging and haven't got the proper permits and surveys done. yes... accidents do happen but can mostly be avoided. but, i guarantee that someone digging up a line with a backhoe happens ALOT less frequent then some idiot in a car taking out a phone-pole.

coin• 7 years ago

See the part about gophers

sigstoat• 7 years ago

there are tradeoffs. digging holes and trenches is expensive.

burfog• 7 years ago

Florida prefers to upgrade the poles to ones that hurricanes can't bother. Concrete is popular, with some poles being 2 feet thick. Ductile iron is becoming popular.

Buried stuff is hard to fix and is at risk of flooding.

village-idiot2• 7 years ago

Squirrels are considered a strategic threat to the US infrastructure according to some governmental agencies. They're amazingly effective at knocking out power lines, albeit to the detriment of the squirrel who undertakes these apparent suicide missions.

arafa• 7 years ago

Used to happen at our house all the time (once every 6-12 months), we had lots of trees near power lines. There'd be a bang, a blue flash of light, a dead squirrel, and no power (or a power dip).

siffland• 7 years ago

We had the entire power to our building knocked out by a squirrel, one of the admins got a picture of it fried on the ground after it fell. Took the power company about 4 hours get power back to the building, one would think it would be a little more difficult to knock out power.

totally off topic, but we have a pear tree in the back yard by a fence and the squirrels will take bites out of the pears before they are ripe and knock them on the ground. In over a decade we have not gotten a single pear off the tree. My wife hates them and will yell at them, she has delcared war on them (but she is losing). So they are efficient at being pests.

gavman• 7 years ago

99% Invisible did a great episode on squirrels, covering their history in major American cities (they were introduced, not native) and the havoc the wreak on our infrastructure

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/uptown-squirrel/

tzs3• 7 years ago

The Eastern Gray squirrel is native in eastern and midwestern North America, but it lives in forests, and we cut those down to make room for cities. So bringing some in to live in the parks and other trees of those cities seems more like re-introducing a native species than introducing a non-native species.

They were later also brought in to cities in other parts of North America, and there it was introducing a non-native species. Worse, in many of those areas there were species of native squirrels living outside the cities. After the Eastern Gray's were brought to the cities, they often spread to the forests outside the cities, and took over the habitat of the native squirrels.

Here in the state of Washington, there is only one small area known to still have a native Western Gray squirrel population. The Eastern Grays, introduced a little under 100 years ago, have taken their place everywhere else.

I have no idea why whoever wanted squirrels in Seattle decided to bring Eastern Grays from across the country, instead of simply going and trapping a few of the then abundant native Western Grays outside the city, and using those.

lbutler• 7 years ago

While we don't have squirrels in Australia, we're not immune to this problem either! Cockatoos, a native parrot, love chewing up our fibre lines.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/the-nbn-project/a-uniquely-aus...

AWildC1822• 7 years ago

I have a cockatiel (small cousin to the cockatoo) at home. The first thing I thought when I saw "Australia" was "oh god, cockatoos." Mine regularly severs USB and headphone cables with ease then spends hours stripping all the insulation off preventing any hope of repair. I can only imagine what the Australian flying bolt cutters could do.

Edit: to anyone contemplating a parrot who owns a laptop, you will come back into the room to find it completely stripped of all its keys. Parrots just really love forcibly disassembling things.

dreamcompiler4• 7 years ago

Someday our era may be known to history as "just before the Caddyshack Apocalypse."

hbarka• 7 years ago

Aerial things are the number one culprit for man-made damage to squirrels.

PhasmaFelis• 7 years ago

Why is it not practical to impregnate the cable sheaths with something foul-tasting?

LifeofPi314• 7 years ago

My dog tries to tell me this everyday.

seiferteric• 7 years ago

They're adorable, I forgive them.

tzs3• 7 years ago

anybody that has ever put out a bird feeder knows how persistent squirrels can be

Bribery is effective. Put out a separate feeder with something squirrels like [1], make it easier to reach than your bird feeders, and keep it stocked. The squirrels will feed there and leave the other feeders alone.

[1] https://www.perkypet.com/articles/what-to-feed-squirrels

yareally2• 7 years ago

I haven't had to try it yet (no squirrels raiding my feeder in the area), but supposedly spraying hot pepper juice on bird seed should keep the squirrels away while still letting the birds eat the seed. Birds are immune to the effects of capsicum because it doesn't attach to their pain receptors.

https://www.maddog357.com/chili-pepper-birdseed-yes-thing/

patio11• 7 years ago

HN exposed me to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/squirrel-po... , which has the best paragraph about squirrels ever:

Matthew Olearczyk, a program manager with the Electric Power Research Institute, explains that typically a squirrel will cause a blackout by scampering across electrical equipment and touching simultaneously both an energized component, like one of the cylindrical transformers at the top of a utility pole, and a grounded piece of equipment. The squirrel completes the circuit, generating an arc. There is an instantaneous flash of blue light. At its center is the squirrel, combusting.

cco• 7 years ago

I'm confused as to why this hasn't been incorporated into designs for electrical utilities, squirrel length is pretty easy to figure out and then just never design components that could be shorted via that reach.

Squirrels Are the Number One Culprit for Animal Damage to Aerial Fiber

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