Scot,

Here's what we received from the Assocaited Press.

-- Kendall P. Stanley Managing editor Petoskey News-Review (231) 439-9349 (231) 881-4349 (cell)

By JOHN FLESHER Associated Press Writer TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. _ Northeastern Michigan had a problem to chew on: Long-distance phone service was interrupted for more than six hours after a beaver apparently gnawed through a fiber optic cable.

"In my 33 years with the company I've never heard of this happening," said John VanWyck, spokesman for Verizon Communications. "I've heard of squirrels chewing aerial cable, but not this."

The outage began shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday [July 1st]. Service was completely restored by 2:35 p.m. Some 62,000 customers were affected, including long-distance, dial-up Internet and some cellular phone services, as well as credit card and ATM machines.

"This has had a huge impact on our business," Doug Morrison, owner of a grocery store in Hillman, told The Alpena News. "Seventy percent of our business pays by credit card. Because of this stupid thing, our machines won't work. We've had a lot of customers leave $100 in groceries because they couldn't pay for them."

The affected area extended from Roscommon County north to Gaylord and east to Alpena and Rogers City, VanWyck said.

It took crews a while to locate the source of the problem because the cable was stretched across a wetland area north of Houghton Lake, near the headwaters of the Muskegon River, he said.

The state Department of Natural Resources had lowered the water level in

the

wetland by several feet because of heavy rain in recent months, VanWyck said. The wetland drains into the lake and the river.

"The lower water levels exposed the fiber optic cable," VanWyck said. "From all indications, it appears a beaver picked it up and chewed it in half. By the looks of the ends of the cable, it was obviously chewed."

The outage was ill-timed for businesses in the area, particularly motels taking reservations for the Fourth of July weekend.

"It wasn't as bad as it could have been, because we were able to get some incoming calls for some reason," said Tom Zamoyski, general manager of Best Western Alpine Lodge in Gaylord. "But we couldn't call any of our customers or suppliers, and we couldn't use e-mail. We had a lot of guests in house and they were frustrated that they couldn't call out."

Emergency dispatch centers in Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency and Presque Isle counties maintained radio contact until long distance service was restored, said Bruce Wozniak, 911 emergency services coordinator for Alpena County.