(Tim Umphreys/Unsplash)
My brain doesn’t necessarily work like a beaver’s. My interests are different, as are my basic skills sets. And that’s fine, I don’t claim to understand a dam thing about beavers.
But when beavers attack something I care about, I must speak up.
Recently, beavers in a remote area of British Columbia chewed up some underground fiber cables, preventing about 900 homes and businesses from getting on the internet, requiring officials from the telecom firm Telus to take the frustrating steps of digging through partly frozen ground to find the damaged cables.
In what a company spokeswoman called “a very unusual and uniquely Canadian turn of events,” officials for the telecom firm had to spend hours trying to find the culprit area. And ultimately, they did, only returning service to Tumbler Ridge Sunday afternoon. These beavers chewed through a 4-and-a-half-inch tube on their way to finding the fiber goodness.
WTF, beavers?!? (via CTV)
Now, to be clear, this beaver problem reflects a broader issue that faces folks in North America—after a period of history when beavers were hunted for their fur, the population of the beaver is simply growing, which means these flat-tailed rodents are going to become increasingly in conflict with modern human activity, Canadian symbol or not.
Just two weeks ago, for example, beavers caused flooding in the Quebec town of Grenville-sur-la-Rouge, while beavers are creating problems with trees falling into homes elsewhere in British Columbia.
The Humane Society admits that beavers are an active nuisance that can cause external issues, but that there are better ways to deal with them than trapping.
Whatever the case, none of this excuses what these beavers did to the internet. I mean, HOW COULD THEY. Do they not know what’s on the internet, how great it is? Have they never spent an hour watching tech videos on YouTube just because? Have they never considered that reloading Pitchfork for the 51st time today won’t tell you much more than what you learned the first or second time you loaded that site? What it’s like to type in a URL on a mechanical keyboard?
Of course not. They’re beavers. And they have now created a new enemy in me. Do not mess with the internet, boys.
Time limit given ⏲: 30 minutes
Time left on clock ⏲: 3 minutes, 29 seconds
