The Reg has had its share of drive-by shootings, Cisco fiascos and co-lo catastrophes over the last week.

But at least we've escaped the attentions of the local wildlife (in London that equals rats, tree rats, also known as grey squirrels and flying rats, sometimes called pigeons)...unlike Tyler Brule, Canadian-born editor of Wallpaper, the ever-so-trendy home design rag.

A resourceful fellow, Brule ordered a staffer to fly out with the proofs, a response denied to most mere mortals. But who cares about this? We're more interested in the cable-chewing badgers: this is one of the top tech failure excuses of all time.

It ranks up there with the grey squirrel which twice - yes twice brought stock trades on NASDAQ to a halt by chomping through power cables. Grey squirrels are suspected of responsibility for half the unsolved fires in the United States. ®