Found a squirrel living inside a customer's cable box last week

I'm doing a disconnect at this house in the suburbs and pop open the exterior cable box and this squirrel just stares at me like I'm the one intruding. He had chewed through about 3 feet of RG6 and made a nest out of the insulation. Customer comes out and goes "oh yeah, I heard scratching for like a month but thought it was the AC unit." Took me 45 minutes to clear everything out and re-run the line while the squirrel just watched from a tree. Has anyone else had animals get inside these boxes or am I just unlucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim9631mo ago

A WASP NEST?! No way, I would've quit on the spot 😂

oscar_ellis1mo ago

Honestly I gotta push back a little here. You're acting like this is some rare freak accident but this is basically a weekly thing for any tech who's been in the field more than six months. Those boxes are basically rodent hotels with free cable access. They're warm, they're dark, they've got perfect nesting material in the insulation. The only thing surprising is that the customer actually admitted they heard scratching and did nothing about it. Most people just stare at you blankly like the chewed up cable materialized out of nowhere. Ngl you got off easy with just one squirrel. I've seen mice nests, ant colonies, and once a full wasp nest in those things.