Authorities in Great Britain are trying to get broadband to the last 10% or households that lack it, which tend to be in rural areas of the country. And helping to get the job done, for over a year now, has been a platoon of specially-trained ferrets.
Virgin Media has been keeping its use of the clever, curious and slender pets quiet until it could assess their effectiveness, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.
Ferrets, which have been used for centuries to flush rabbits and rodents out of their holes, have also been used often to string cable for various applications.
Their current job involves wearing a special jacket carrying a microchip that can analyze underground broadband lines for breaks or other malfunctions.
RBR-TVBR observation: Full-disclosure – we own five ferrets, but they have yet to get a paying gig, preferring to live of the fat of the land as provided by the two-legged inhabitants of this domicile. In fact, it’s worse than that – one of them is currently embarked on a serial sock-thieving crime spree.
Another has been know to steal cell phones, and yet another one time purloined and stashed a wallet in an incredibly difficult to locate hidey-hole. The phones were generally well-hidden too, and we had to dial them up and get them ringing in order to track them down.
So if the authorities in Great Britain need to get socks, cell phones or credit-card and cash-laden leatherworks into the broadband cable pipes for any reason, we have just the specialists for the job.
