Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site seismo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hao!seismo!flinn From: flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: Srtringing cables using rats Message-ID: <710@seismo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 15-Mar-84 22:47:29 EST Article-I.D.: seismo.710 Posted: Thu Mar 15 22:47:29 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 17-Mar-84 07:01:58 EST Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA Lines: 22 --- Some years ago there was a newspaper article about the difficulties some organization (maybe even Bell Labs) had in getting a cable from one of their buildings across one of the interstates in New Jersey to another of their buildings. For some reason they couldn't put the cable on poles, so they tried to snake it through a smallish pipe (6" or so) that ran under the road. A number of attempts to thread the cable through the pipe failed. Then someone thought of small animals - tie a thread to the tail of a rat, say, shoo it from one end of the pipe to the other, and go from there. The rats all failed to make it all the way, collapsing from exhaustion in the pipe. They tried tying the thread to a male rat and shooing a female rat into the pipe ahead of him, but that didn't work either. [they could have tried it the other way around with a pair of rats that had been married a long time]. The newspaper article was about a ceremony the organization held for the press after a large husky rat named Dynamite had completed a rigorous physical training course and was to do the mighty deed. It turned out that the photographers' flashes scared Dynamite, who dropped dead of a heart attack before the assembled company. The story didn't say how or whether the cable was ever gotten through the pipe.