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.