We know, squirrels are cute. Squirrels are photogenic. Squirrels have a really good public relations agency.

Squirrels are also, pound-for-pound, some of the most destructive critters out there.

How destructive? On Monday (Nov. 23), we’re going to be replacing an overhead NextLight fiber cable in central Longmont that got chewed, chewed, chewed ‘til it just can’t get chewed no more. Our crews will be working from about 6:30 in the morning until 5 p.m. to get the repair and replacement done, with a line that’s better armored against rodent teeth.

For about 1,000 of our NextLight customers, that’s going to mean a short outage. An individual customer may see service go out for up to 30 minutes, and we’re doing our best to make it as fast as we safely can. For customers that also have Digital Voice, this will affect both internet and telephone service, so plan ahead.

We’ve called or emailed the affected homes and businesses, which are mostly between First Avenue, Coffman Street, Ninth Avenue and Sunset Golf Course. If you think you might have missed seeing the message or you’re not sure if you received one, call us at 303-774-4494 and we’ll bring you up to date.  

If you’re a longtime NextLight customer, you know we don’t do this often. We use a lot of wildlife protection measures on both our electrical and NextLight utilities, so that we can keep our systems and the local critters safe from each other. And when we do need to make a repair, we get the word out and we do it as efficiently as we can. This is your network, and we know how important a reliable high-speed connection is to you – especially these days!

Thanks for your patience. We really appreciate it.

Especially when times get a little squirrely.

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PS – The LPC electric side of things has just as much “fun” with these furry guys. For example, here are the average number of outages of five minutes or longer (per 1,000 customers) that were caused by squirrels just between 2016-2018.