[HN Gopher] Internet down in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., after beaver c...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Internet down in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., after beaver chews through
       fibre cable
        
       Author : barbazoo
       Score  : 237 points
       Date   : 2021-04-25 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
        
       | SassyGoose wrote:
       | Reminds me of this one: https://cybersquirrel1.com/
       | 
       | Great, now we'll have to start taking beavers into account too
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | addajones wrote:
       | I hope that beaver can chew through all fiber cables in the world
       | and people go outside and live more and communicate in person
       | again. Good job beaver.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | Meanwhile in real world we've still got a pandemic going on and
         | the internet allows us to communicate more.
        
         | great_reversal wrote:
         | Meanwhile people are going outside more because of the
         | pandemic. So much for lockdowns.
        
       | sharkweek wrote:
       | I want to write a satirical short story about a total global
       | collapse for the silliest reason possible and would absolutely
       | love to use a premise as ridiculous as a beaver taking down the
       | internet.
        
         | aidos wrote:
         | You could always go for a more Stephen King plot involving an
         | evil old tv
         | https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/18-months-of-v...
        
           | edoceo wrote:
           | who made who / maximum overdrive. Amazing.
        
         | vitabenes wrote:
         | What if you tied in the Suez stuck ship somehow...
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | cm2187 wrote:
       | How can they tell where is the cable damage? If the cable is all
       | underground, surely they didn't dig up the whole thing? Can they
       | measure that from one end? Do they do a binary search by digging
       | and testing?
        
         | morsch wrote:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_time-domain_reflecto...
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | OTDR - optical time domain reflectometer, you connect it to the
         | fiber at one end and it'll tell you where the break is,
         | accurate to plus or minus 20-30 meters
        
         | segfaultbuserr wrote:
         | If you want to understand how TDR works, watch this classic
         | tutorial from the mid-50s in the AT&T archive.
         | 
         | * AT&T Archives: Similiarities of Wave Behavior
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DovunOxlY1k
         | 
         | Pure software developers are often surprised when they learned
         | that it's possible to detect the location of a break in the
         | mains wiring or an Ethernet cable, just by testing from one end
         | of the cable. There's no closed loop, why is it possible to
         | test anything electrically? Because at high frequency, the
         | circuit becomes an electromagnetic waveguide.
         | 
         | Basically like a radar, you send a fast pulse (electrical or
         | optical), the EM waves travels along the cable until it hits
         | the break and reflects back. You listen for the echo. Record
         | the time, use the speed of light to pinpoint the location of
         | the break.
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | >it appears the beavers dug underground alongside the creek to
       | reach our cable, which is buried about three feet underground and
       | protected by a 4.5-inch thick conduit. The beavers first chewed
       | through the conduit before chewing through the cable in multiple
       | locations,"
       | 
       | sounds very determined, and i wonder what caused that beaver's
       | rage against the machine.
        
       | tux wrote:
       | ... a photo from the site appeared to show the beavers using
       | Telus materials to build their home ...
       | 
       | LOL surviving beaver's in 2021. At first I thought this was a
       | joke, but no... beaver's are getting smarter.
        
       | neom wrote:
       | Beavers are _extremely_ cool. Being Canadian, I never gave them
       | very much thought until the youtube algorithm one day had me
       | watching a documentary about them, that lead to me searching out
       | another documentary to watch about them because they 're so
       | fascinating.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyBZ1mdg2c
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N15sLwRCmnc
        
         | aneutron wrote:
         | Thank you very much for the links. I have learned so much in 45
         | minutes.
        
         | adameasterling wrote:
         | I completely agree!
         | 
         | Beavers make habitats! They create entire ecosystems! They turn
         | semi-arid land into lush wetlands. Their lodges become homes
         | for muskrats and otters. The wetlands they make support bird,
         | and frog, and fish populations.
         | 
         | California used to have hundreds of thousands of them. The now-
         | semiarid Central Valley looked very different before humans
         | started trapping them in masse, and dammed rivers in the
         | Sierras. I wish I could go back in time and see central
         | California circa 1700. I sometimes wonder if we could restore
         | some of what we lost.
        
           | cyberlurker wrote:
           | I never heard of this before. Thanks for sharing. Any good
           | sources? And do you know of any efforts to reintroduce
           | beavers into parts of California?
        
           | eloff wrote:
           | Yeah, beavers are one of the few animals like us who toil to
           | adapt their habitat to themselves instead of just accepting
           | it.
           | 
           | I've also heard that beavers can't stand the sound of running
           | water, and if you put speakers playing running water in their
           | lodge, they will go to great effort to try and find and dam
           | it. I don't know if that's true, but it seems plausible.
        
             | neom wrote:
             | The doc I posted is actually in part about how they react
             | to the sound of running water, and they show the exact
             | speaker experiment you mentioned. :)
        
             | HelloFellowDevs wrote:
             | According to wiki, you're pretty right.
             | 
             | > The sound of running water appears to stimulate dam-
             | building, and the sound of a leak in a dam triggers them to
             | repair it. [0]
             | 
             | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Infrastructure
        
             | chmod775 wrote:
             | Reminds me of human's proclivity to fashion pointy sticks
             | first chance they get.
             | 
             | I heard if you lock a human in a room with a rock and
             | stick, they'll make a pointy stick. I don't know if that's
             | true, but it seems plausible.
             | 
             | Sorry, I had to ;)
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | I am no ecosystem expert, but in particular I recall reading
           | that the lakes they create are essential for migratory water
           | birds.
        
           | srswtf123 wrote:
           | > I sometimes wonder if we could restore some of what we
           | lost.
           | 
           | We absolutely could; we could make this entire planet a
           | garden if we chose. We simply lack the will.
        
             | dpc59 wrote:
             | A lot of people would be willing. The people with power and
             | contradicting interests don't.
        
         | Naga wrote:
         | I've always found them a bit of an annoyance! Algonquin Park is
         | full of them and they make some of the backcountry routes
         | difficult by changing water levels through it. The amount of
         | beaver dams I have pulled my canoe over!
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | There's a beaver dam near my cottage in Ontario. We pull it
         | apart on occasion as it risks the road. But they build it back
         | up impressively fast.
        
         | cmrdporcupine wrote:
         | My parents have been having a kind of entertaining saga with
         | the beavers that have colonized their rural property in
         | Alberta. It's 100+ acres of bush neighbouring forested crown
         | land, and it had been logged out and abused a bit before they
         | moved there and built their house. So they've spent the last
         | decade and a half restoring it.
         | 
         | In the low lying portion of their land there was always a gully
         | with a tiny little trickle of water, a bit marshy, but no creek
         | or pond. Enough you could step over it, that's it.
         | 
         | Fast forward 15 years and it's now a full pond with a beaver
         | dam and at least one lodge and the water is now so high they
         | can't get to the other half of their property. My dad builds
         | bridges but the beavers keep raising the water level. He builds
         | what he thinks are beaver-proof culverts to lower the water
         | level a bit (but still enough for the beavers), and it works
         | for a couple years and then eventually the beavers figure it
         | out.
         | 
         | Unfortunately it has gotten to the point where he may have to
         | do a bit of population control on them, as they are getting
         | beyond destructive and he's getting older. He tried to live in
         | harmony with them, but it's gotten tricky. Luckily their house
         | is well up on the hill but they do want to be able to get to
         | the other half of their property.
        
           | eggsmediumrare wrote:
           | Props to your folks for restoring damaged land.
        
       | iptrans wrote:
       | Less sexy headline: "Internet down in Canadian village due to
       | poor planning and lack of proper redundancy"
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | slver wrote:
         | It's not exactly unexpected the last mile cable for a small
         | village to have no redundancy. The redundancy is: use your
         | cellular connection until they fix the cable.
        
           | LeoPanthera wrote:
           | The story says that cell service is also down.
        
           | iptrans wrote:
           | The same cable was used for cell service...
        
             | lostlogin wrote:
             | Not sure why you're downvoted - the article says "Telus
             | warns that cellphone service in the area is likely to be
             | spotty until the cable is repaired." Maybe the cellular
             | outage is from more people using it rather than damage?
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | It's a tiny town with only a few road routes in and out. Now go
         | do the budget in dollars per km to build a fully redundant ring
         | topology of fiber, via diverse routing, to the nearest mid size
         | city. Lots of rural places are effectively a singlehomed stub,
         | and you take your chances with a flash flood washing out a
         | conduit alongside a road, trees falling on lines, beavers, etc.
        
         | visiblink wrote:
         | It's a tiny, dying mining town over 50 miles away from the
         | closest community. Having fibre is amazing as it is.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | This happens with cars pretty frequently too, though usually with
       | squirrels. They get in and chew up the wiring harness under the
       | hood. It's crazy expensive to fix because it's not always clear
       | where all the damage is, and access often requires disassembling
       | tons of stuff in the engine bay.
        
         | wkyle wrote:
         | The Bugaboos in Eastern BC are well known for having rubber-
         | eating porcupines. Standard practice when leaving a car at the
         | trailhead for a while is to wrap the underside in chickenwire.
         | 
         | https://www.mountainproject.com/photo/105869551/porcupine-ba...
        
         | jshmrsn wrote:
         | Had exactly this happen to my Fit. Can confirm it was an
         | expensive fix, increasing TCO of the car by a significant
         | percentage since it wasn't a very expensive car to begin with.
         | I can only hope the squirrel enjoyed their $1,000 lunch.
        
         | leesalminen wrote:
         | Some rabbits got my car earlier this spring in the driveway.
         | The price to fix wasn't astronomical, but luckily their little
         | nest was quite visible once they jacked the car up. The wires
         | they chewed were close to that.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | Mice too.
         | 
         | There was an interesting lawsuit a while ago about how newer
         | cars use a plastic for the wire insulation that's alledgedly
         | more attractive to rodents, although I don't recall the
         | outcome.
        
         | killjoywashere wrote:
         | The car wires are because people started using insulation out
         | of peanut, soy, and rice husks. Good example of something that
         | seemed superficially good for the environment but had
         | unforeseen consequences. I'm not advocating for asbestos here,
         | but there are certainly non-edible, noxious alternatives.
        
         | KineticLensman wrote:
         | Our overhead utility lines (broadband) run through some woods.
         | Squirrels routinely nibble on them, and then blame the damage
         | on the wind.
        
       | kareemm wrote:
       | Great headline. This should top the reigning champ of famous
       | headlines about Canada - "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative"[1].
       | 
       | 1- https://parli.ca/worthwhile-canadian-initiative/
        
       | nwiswell wrote:
       | What are the odds that [insert your favorite boogeyman global
       | power] has already seeded every submarine communications cable
       | with "robotic beavers", patiently awaiting an activation signal?
       | It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global
       | networks appears to be.
        
         | don-code wrote:
         | I won't disagree that the physical security of the last mile is
         | quite fragile, but I'm not sure the same holds true for the
         | global Internet.
         | 
         | There's no single topology of the Internet, but if I had to try
         | and sum it up: it approaches a mesh at the core, and approaches
         | a star at the edge. Backbones peer with thousands of providers;
         | businesses may have a primary and backup ISP; home users are
         | lucky to even have a second ISP offering service in their area.
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | > It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global
         | networks appears to be.
         | 
         | Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can't name an
         | outage (that wasn't caused by me), ever.
         | 
         | When something gets broken somewhere, presumably my data gets
         | routed around the issue.
        
           | nwiswell wrote:
           | > Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can't
           | name an outage (that wasn't caused by me), ever.
           | 
           | I think that's because the system is designed to be resilient
           | to _random_ failures (e.g., disgruntled beaver). Submarine
           | cables fail all the time and there are repair boats
           | constantly fixing breakages caused by fishing, wildlife, etc.
           | 
           | All of the submarine cables failing at the same time (e.g.,
           | terrorist beavers) is most definitely not a random failure
           | and would, I suspect, cause some proper havoc and take months
           | to fix.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | Couldn't they just restrict the communication on that cable at
         | one of the buildings on either end of the cable? Seems likely
         | that they'd still want to use the cable for some approved
         | communications and would have no trouble controlling things
         | without resort to a robotic cable-chewer.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | This is so that country A can prevent communications between
           | country B and country C in case of war.
           | 
           | I'm not sure it is an especially valuable war tactic, because
           | while you can probably take out some cat videos for a few
           | hours, serious military and political communications will be
           | redirected over satellite links quite quickly.
        
             | tshaddox wrote:
             | Sure, in a total war situation I suppose cutting all long-
             | distance communications would obviously be on the table.
             | But it wouldn't be up there on my list of concerns, cuz
             | nukes and stuff.
             | 
             | I'd see it as a larger concern in the context of terrorism
             | or very asymmetric warfare.
        
         | throwaway823882 wrote:
         | Gentle reminder that multiple countries around the world have
         | almost accidentally started a nuclear holocaust. I'm not that
         | bothered by Netflix going down.
        
           | nwiswell wrote:
           | For what it's worth, that's exactly why it seems like
           | something that is _likely_ to actually happen.
           | 
           | It's one thing to threaten mutual nuclear destruction and
           | quite another to give the order to actually kill hundreds of
           | millions of people and almost certainly end or ruin your own
           | life. Since that basically excludes any intentional act by a
           | moral or rational actor, my understanding is that the closest
           | calls were usually cases of mistaken intent.
           | 
           | A global internet outage would be devastating for economic
           | and possibly humanitarian reasons, but would not have the
           | degree of practical and moral deterrence that exists for
           | nuclear weapons.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | Friendly reminder that it's a lot easier to be talked into
           | hating an "other" when there's no ability to communicate and
           | only the agitators on either side get heard.
        
         | merlinsky wrote:
         | Hi, I am a beaver.AMA
        
           | bushbaba wrote:
           | How do you avoid cavities?
        
           | FridayoLeary wrote:
           | will you donate your fur to science after you die?
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | if nine out of ten dentists recommend a specific toothpaste,
           | do you agree with them?
        
             | merlinsky wrote:
             | Hey walrus01, short answer is - no. You should always do
             | your homework and check it by yourself. Anyway, I am not at
             | the dentist very often.
        
         | Sebb767 wrote:
         | > It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global
         | networks appears to be.
         | 
         | Protecting miles and miles of cable running through the
         | wilderness is an herculean task, especially since usually
         | nobody attempts to attack it. One can of course do a three-way
         | fallback of landline/direct radio link/satellite, but that
         | would be insane cost for, again, basically no benefit and no
         | bandwidth.
         | 
         | Two fiber lines is really the best thing you're going to get if
         | you want good and fast internet speeds at reasonable prices.
        
           | great_reversal wrote:
           | Unless you opt for SpaceX's Starlink. Still expensive, but
           | bandwidth is usually better than without it in remote
           | regions.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Well, yes. Current satellite is pretty awful by all
             | accounts. And many places (like my house 40 miles outside
             | of Boston) don't get great cellular reception--which has
             | effective bandwidth caps in any case. In those situations,
             | StarLink looks like a pretty good option, such as at my
             | dad's house where he had 1 Mbps DSL.
             | 
             | But probably not so great for the crowd that thinks they
             | can't live without 1 Gbps and TBs of data/month.
        
         | protoman3000 wrote:
         | > Robotic Beavers
         | 
         | > Cut submarine cables
         | 
         | You don't need any of that to break havoc on the internet. Just
         | use BGP to advertise bogus routes to any prefixes.
        
           | mort96 wrote:
           | How are you gonna train the beavers to advertise bogus BGP
           | routes?
        
             | protoman3000 wrote:
             | Injecting training data into the brain
             | 
             | https://mobile.twitter.com/axios/status/1382696186684014592
        
         | lolinder wrote:
         | Can we just have a chuckle about a humorous event for once,
         | without someone introducing fear?
        
           | monkeybutton wrote:
           | I sort of assume there's lots of stuff like this that exists
           | and people constantly bringing it up at every opportunity is
           | kind of tiring. The converse where "everyone knows" but
           | doesn't acknowledge it isn't necessarily any better though.
           | 
           | Anyways, the mental image of robot beaver drones with glowing
           | red eyes causing havoc makes up for it.
        
       | walrus01 wrote:
       | Reading this, my first thought really was that some Telus outside
       | plant fiber crews (and possibly contracted trenching or
       | directional boring contractor) are about to make a lot of
       | overtime.
        
       | matsemann wrote:
       | Reminds me about the whale getting caught in an undersea cable a
       | few years back (with some stunning photos):
       | https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23231000-400-hacker-t...
        
       | gallerdude wrote:
       | I wonder if the beaver was ok afterwards.
        
         | tW4r wrote:
         | At least it was a non electrocuting fiber cable
        
         | allenrb wrote:
         | His beaver doctor will be pleased with such healthy fiber
         | intake.
        
         | slver wrote:
         | Nah, he wasn't, he felt pretty bad about the whole ordeal.
        
       | throwawaysea wrote:
       | From some quick searching it seems like this isn't very uncommon,
       | with animals like gophers, squirrels, rats, and more cutting
       | cables all over the world: https://www.rdm.com/rodents-the-
       | biggest-threat-to-fiber-acce...
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | I went to war with a mouse who was attacking the Ethernet
         | cables in the wall near my IT cupboard each night.
         | 
         | Listening to it chomping away was anxiety inducing. Pics Peanut
         | Butter turned out to be the perfect bait.
         | 
         | https://www.picspeanutbutter.com
        
       | bacheaul wrote:
       | Add it to the list... https://cybersquirrel1.com/
        
       | f430 wrote:
       | I got a txt message from my friend about this wholives there. Was
       | surprised that they have cell reception.
        
       | davidf18 wrote:
       | Amazing how beavers can chew through a steel conduit used for
       | containing the cable.
        
       | visiblink wrote:
       | I lived and worked in Tumbler Ridge for about six years in the
       | 80s and 90s. I never expected to see it on the Hacker News. Too
       | funny!
        
       | zoomies wrote:
       | busky beaver used to be the world's most famous beaver, & world's
       | third favorite rodent, second only to mickey and rocky, that dear
       | friend of bullwinkle.
       | 
       | busky beaver used to attract hundreds of thousands of annual
       | tourists & visitors to the river.
       | 
       | - the dams it built ~ - the stick stacking ~ throughout canada,
       | renowned & amounted to some of the biggest, most ferocious,
       | meticulous ordered N precision-stacked on the banks, all around
       | 
       | - but in the 90s, - in the 2000s, slowly, annual visitors were
       | dwindling
       | 
       | "wtf?"
       | 
       | said busky.
       | 
       | for the beaver was at the top of it's game, & no ordinary thing
       | could explain what was happening.
       | 
       | the consensus, however, was overall positive.
       | 
       | "more forest for me"
       | 
       | was the essence of forest-animal conversation,
       | 
       | but busky beaver wasn't happy.
       | 
       | "what about BC's nature-derived GDP?"
       | 
       | fact is busky was a top earner for the industry. had woodpecker
       | pecked plaques & everything & didn't like no-one - neither beaver
       | nor techie - biting into his bottom line ..
       | 
       | by & by, birds in the trees, tweeted talks of some internet
       | thing.
       | 
       | absorbing attn. keeping tourists, netflixed comfy on homefront.
       | 
       | "well busky being busky wasn't just going to let things slide .."
       | 
       | "this requires adventure of a different kind."
       | 
       | & so it t'was, busky said:
       | 
       | "i'm going to find the internet & stop it."
       | 
       | forest heard that. talk pinged. honey badgers scoffed loudly
       | 
       | "you can't stop the internet!" said honey bader "It's
       | everywhere!"
       | 
       | "Why don't you help me?"
       | 
       | but honey badger don't care.
       | 
       | well neither did busky.
       | 
       | and so it goes, busky just went ahead, adventured out there.
       | 
       | - days passed, - months followed, - busky trekkin,
       | 
       | combing through the forest for internet, asking questions,
       | turning up nothing
       | 
       | "wheretf is it?"
       | 
       | long story cut short,
       | 
       | encounters happened,. trying times & tribulation .. tests
       | vanquished, all passed, but all the same.
       | 
       | nonetheless, no trace of internet. and so it goes, busky went all
       | across canada, through alaska, reached china, crossed russia,
       | ended up back in canada.
       | 
       | "wtf?!"
       | 
       | it'd been years hence but suddenly, busky was back at his home
       | dam.
       | 
       | & some m th r f ck r z had laid fiber optics across it?
       | 
       | "fk that."
       | 
       | busky had beaver mouth, could back his own talk when it came to
       | chewing. & so, busky cut through the fiber optics, in minutes.
       | next thing, WWW in BC, went bust.
       | 
       | and eventually birdys got word, talk traveled.
       | 
       | happenstance cut fast,
       | 
       | woodpecker pecked plaque but the lumberjacks are coming
       | 
       | tbc .. (potentially)
       | 
       | //* when you seek a teacher, one will show up next door;
       | (something like that)
       | 
       | also - not edited / just quick "flash" written.
       | 
       | love hacker news / hope you enjoyed */
        
       | doodlebugging wrote:
       | I never thought I would see this place mentioned on HN. It is a
       | fairly quiet place way up in British Columbia. When I was there a
       | long time ago they had a nice self-contained town with
       | skating/hockey rink, a Mountie station, a couple of streets
       | through the middle of town with shopping for all the essentials,
       | and gas stations and clubs near the outside of town. We would hit
       | up that club that had beer, billiards, and karaoke for fun when
       | we'd get the occasional chance to go into town.
       | 
       | I worked on a drilling rig outside of town on the side of a
       | mountain above timberline. It was beautiful country, absolutely
       | fantastic. When I got there I thought about what a waste it was
       | to be drilling in such a beautiful place with all the desolate
       | places still available on earth and no guaranteed payout due to
       | complex geology.
       | 
       | Native wildlife wandered by camp and the location daily. Back
       | then Canada really led the way with their environmental
       | protections. All water related to drilling had to be contained on
       | the location within a berm large enough to prevent escape. Vacuum
       | trucks ran all day if necessary and when it did rain it was a 24
       | hour a day job until the location was clear of pooled water that
       | could escape into the clear creeks in the area. Solids control
       | (handling drill cuttings) involved collection and compression of
       | cuttings to remove fluids which were then chemically treated to
       | restore their properties for reuse in drilling while the cuttings
       | were pelletized for shipment offsite. I had never seen that in
       | the US. They clearly had a commitment to environmental
       | protection.
       | 
       | Years later the Harper government came in and eliminated some of
       | those protections to favor production, especially of their vast
       | oil sands resources.
       | 
       | When I was in college, those oil sands were given as an example
       | of one of the largest petroleum deposits on earth. The case was
       | made that they would never fully be developed since the oil had
       | lost all the lighter fraction and it was necessary to inject
       | steam to recover from most of the sands. This was an expensive
       | process wasting and polluting huge quantities of water, but it
       | was also something that would forever destroy a huge region and
       | render the water undrinkable. The projection back then was that
       | it would take sustained $80/bbl oil for it to be economical since
       | the process was so expensive.
       | 
       | Fast forward a couple decades and everything has ramped up due to
       | oil price increases driven largely by a switch from demand
       | pricing in the markets to speculative pricing and you see the
       | resulting devastation they have wrought on the area.
       | 
       | Pretty sad. I hate that my career has enabled bullshit like this.
       | All those places I visited and came to love have been destroyed
       | by an industry full of liars who value integrity only when it
       | involves keeping an industry secret and encourage the opposite
       | when the truth could cause your business model financial
       | problems.
       | 
       | Tumbler Ridge has some really nice waterfalls nearby if you ever
       | visit and it is not far from other places worth seeing. I took
       | all the time when I should've been in camp sleeping for the next
       | tour (shift) and drove out to Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort St
       | John and other places so I could see things that I felt I would
       | never again have the opportunity to see. I saw the color change
       | from summer to fall colors as it spread across the landscape,
       | watched trees lose their leaves, felt the first unexpected
       | snowfall as it buried our gear under 3 feet of fresh snow, I
       | jumped off a snow cornice and slid down the side of the mountain
       | on my chest using my feet as steering so I could dodge all the
       | obvious rocks. I watched a grizzly walk down the same valley I
       | had just crossed and pause to sniff the wind when he caught my
       | trail.
       | 
       | I know they'll get the problem fixed. This just brought back so
       | much.
        
       | guardiangod wrote:
       | Beavers have been making a comeback to downtown Vancouver after a
       | 60 years hiatus. They've been milling about Stanley Park (a major
       | park beside downtown) and set up dens in the park's river system.
       | 
       | https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/animals/beavers-stanley-p...
        
       | jakeinspace wrote:
       | This makes me inexplicably happy. For whatever reason, any story
       | about wild animals wreaking havoc on our fiddly human
       | contrivances is incredibly amusing. I'm sure there's a literary
       | or philosophical term that captures this feeling. This applies
       | doubly so for beavers. I can't quite put my finger on the reason
       | for that; maybe it's because they're so busy and determined, to
       | the extent that all their accidental floodings and property
       | destruction feel entirely intentional and premeditated.
        
         | gregsadetsky wrote:
         | It makes me think of the recent "Nature is healing" memes
         | (sometimes "Nature is healing, we are the virus"), i.e. Nature
         | is taking back what humans assumed was theirs to keep.
         | 
         | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavi...
         | 
         | I agree that the "cute/relentless" combo of beavers is quite
         | comical..! See:
         | 
         | https://www.irishtimes.com/news/beavers-continue-relentless-...
        
           | adventured wrote:
           | It makes me think of how anti-human, self-hatred focused (all
           | notions that humans are a virus derive from self-hatred
           | first, without exception), and irrational those memes are,
           | since humans are nature. Anything we do and anything we
           | build, is nature in action.
        
             | vernie wrote:
             | I wonder if it coincides with antinatalist attitudes.
        
             | 6510 wrote:
             | What kind of adversary is mother nature expecting that she
             | would spawn such monstrosities? It seems like the most
             | serious case of paranoia. I feel like a means of mass
             | producing bad ideas now.
        
           | trhway wrote:
           | >a Canadian- made steel trap, pulling it out of the water
           | 
           | even at this day and age we're still doing that cruelty of
           | subjecting the animals to the hours/days long medieval
           | torture.
        
         | viciousvoxel wrote:
         | perhaps not the precise term, but "wabi-sabi" comes to mind;
         | something like the beauty of nature, the impermanence of
         | things, and decay; i.e., an appreciation of nature's tendency
         | towards maximal entropy. also the phrase, "the best laid plans
         | of mice and men."
        
           | jakeinspace wrote:
           | I think that's very close, thank you.
        
         | sigg3 wrote:
         | Most of humanity, for most of our existence, have been and are
         | "busy and determined" though.
         | 
         | It's easy to forget, but we really should not.
        
         | slver wrote:
         | I have to admit "happy" was not a word I expected to see in
         | this thread.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | > I'm sure there's a literary or philosophical term that
         | captures this feeling.
         | 
         | It's not 100% that, but "schadenfreude" comes close.
        
         | kefabean wrote:
         | This reminds me of my neighbour's recent problem with his fibre
         | (to the premises) broadband here in the UK. After losing
         | internet connectivity, he eventually managed to get a BT
         | Openreach engineer out only to discover the overhead cables had
         | been chewed through presumably by a grey squirrel. Apparently
         | they have a taste for something in the outer casing..
        
         | jakeinspace wrote:
         | Of course, being a cute and silly looking creature doesn't hurt
         | either
        
       | zeeshanqureshi wrote:
       | It's a 3-day galactic space journey!
        
       | Larrikin wrote:
       | My first reading thought it would be an imagined Tumblr page
       | involving beavers if Tumblr existed in BC times
        
       | dylan604 wrote:
       | This will probably be the most Canadian thing you'll read all
       | day.
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | Maple Syrup (sorry)
        
       | cmrdporcupine wrote:
       | The most fascinating fact about this is that this northern B.C.
       | community has a fibre optic link. I live 5 minutes from town in
       | Ontario in one of the highest populated metro regions in the
       | world and I don't even have DSL.
        
         | SECProto wrote:
         | You'd be suffering from the last mile [1] problem. Tumbler
         | Ridge likely got the fibre connection due to some
         | industrial/govt user (the museum? the former mine? the
         | archaelogists?), and delivering fibre to other households would
         | be a weeks work which might just make sense to do while the
         | crews are already out there.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile
        
           | dleslie wrote:
           | There's fibre all over rural/semi-rural BC; internet access
           | was mandated by the regulator, and the old copper lines
           | needed replacing, so Telus went fibre to the door.
        
         | dleslie wrote:
         | Rural and semi-rural BC have fibre whereas most of Vancouver
         | doesn't; it's a quirk of circumstance, really. They replaced
         | rural copper lines with fibre and just went fibre to the door,
         | whereas urban copper is resilient and competes with cable
         | internet; and it's expensive to run fibre into appartment
         | buildings after they've been built. Access availability in
         | remote areas was mandated by the CRTC.
         | 
         | I lived outside of Nanaimo and we had cable internet in 1996,
         | before Quake was released! Much of the mainland didn't get
         | cable until a little while later.
        
       | floathub wrote:
       | After everyone had politely to apologized to each other, and to
       | the Beaver, they had a few Nanaimo Bars and all was well.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | SassyGoose wrote:
       | Great, now we have to start taking beavers into account too.
       | Squirrels were a known cyber threat: https://cybersquirrel1.com/
        
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