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I am not a cat fan, or a squirrel fan. I do know from observing squirrels crossing power lines that their dielectric constant is significantly lower than that of air, but I've never figured out how to determine it strictly from observation without actually doing an empirical measurement.

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Squirrels act as inductors in DC circuits. Only once though. There's a high current surge that drops to zero as they turn rapidly into a carbon resistor!

a bit like the NED Noise Emitting Diode - makes a lound noise once

Having sat there, as a teenager, with a whole bag of 1N4148s and a mains test block, can confirm :)

We had a number of network outages at Apple due to squirrels inserting themselves in the NOC's power lines.

Note to self: Don't design any circuits that incorporate these animals. Squirrels make terrible fuses.

So true.

We had a different problem. They chewed through the fibre cables between our offices to get the fiberglass sheath for their nests. Eventually they ran Ethernet underground because they'd have broken it again in a couple of weeks.

Whereupon: Moles :-)

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