Network engineers in the UK have turned to a small, furry and smelly predator to transport cable that last mile to sensitive sites. A TV audience of a billion is expected to watch a millennium party at Greenwich but digging up turf in the site of a Royal park is strictly forbidden. This inevitably created a major problem in bringing cables to the site.

Engineers managed to drill tunnels underground and then turned to the ferrets to transport the cable. Wearing nylon harnesses, the ferrets needed no encouragement to dash down the tunnels trailing a wire behind them. This was then used to pull cables through, once the ferrets completed their journeys and were rewarded with a chunk of meat.

Ferrets love tunnels because they assume they contain rabbits, their favorite food. With protests growing over the way that telcos are ripping up sidewalks, the ferrets colud face a growing workload as the country is cabled.