Too bad it is New Zealand or I would offer the services of a certified rat's bane. 14 lbs of terror to every rat, not to mention mouse or lizard within a 200 yard radius...
Martin Whiteshoes
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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Rats Take Down Kiwi Telecomms |
| 2005-06-24 |
| Rats gnawing through cable helped cripple telecommunications services across New Zealand for more than four hours, an investigation has found. But the rodents will go unpunished as the telco instead goes after the humans who were unwitting collaborators in the shutdown. Telephone, mobile, Internet and eftpos services affecting about 100,000 customers were lost on Monday and the nation's stock exchange closed for most of the trading day because of the outage. The interruption occurred after two service pipelines on the North Island were knocked out within hours of each other -- one by a power company post-hole digger, the other by industrious rodents. The rats attacked cable on a bridge north of Wellington protected by a steel duct. "Rodents being rodents, they gnaw at those entry points, they burrow underground, they find a way in," Telecom New Zealand general manager of network delivery Steve Fuller told the New Zealand Herald. Powerless to take action against the rats for the "unavoidable" damage, Telecom is seeking compensation from the electricity company it says is responsible for knocking out the other pipeline, eliminating backup services. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #6 Rats.... why do they hagte us? (sorry,,, someone had to say it...). |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-06-24 22:17 |
| #5 Must be Jack the Rat's cousin from Chicago, who bit through the insulation of wires in a high voltage cabinet and shut down a whole mall. Of course, Jack was fried to a crisp. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-06-24 21:41 |
| #4 Mr. Whiteshoes brings to my mind one of our boys watching a jihadi. heheh. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-06-24 14:52 |
| #3 I figure the rats probably went crazy from all that excess carbon dioxide they got floating around down there... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-06-24 14:51 |
| #2 It's Friday! I've oft admired Mr. Whiteshoes photo. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-24 14:49 |
| #1 Hire an army of cats. Too bad it is New Zealand or I would offer the services of a certified rat's bane. 14 lbs of terror to every rat, not to mention mouse or lizard within a 200 yard radius... Martin Whiteshoes |
| Posted by: BigEd 2005-06-24 13:54 |