This may officially be the most bizarre question ever asked on this forum...

Here in PA, we routinely used to see telephone poles with a small yellow "net" attached to the pole near the bottom, about 3 feet above the ground. They are a yellow (plastic?) sheet about 10" wide by 8" high, with rectangular holes about 1" wide and 1.25" high punched out in a grid that resembles, well, a net. They are plastered flat against the pole.

I used to see these all the time (and scratch my head), but in recent years they have gotten rare. Today I saw one in Dublin, PA, and it looked fairly new. Googling turns up squat....

This is not a belated April Fool's post - just me with way too much time on my hands, eyes that notice everything, and an inquiring mind that wants to know...

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Jim,

Around here the electric companies wrap a black "felt" around the bottom, above and below gain bolts, and over the top ... to prevent moisture intrusion and reduce assaults by woodpeckers.

I have not seen what you have mentioned but could it be to stop wood assualt by mammals?

:shrug:

I forgot to mention that there is only one of these on any given pole, and it doesn't cover more than about 20% of the circumference of the pole. If they wrapped completely around the pole, then critter control would be a good explanation. But then again, maybe they are imbibed with a chemical scent that repels beavers or something (Wild Speculation by me).

More Wild Speculations: Could it be a marker made to be visible at a long distance, indicating something or other? [1]

There is nothing in the Premax catalog (or Electromark) that looks like these, though. I also though they might be "delineators," which is what Premax calls the reflective strips designed to make poles more visible at night. But, I don't ever recall them being reflective (will verify that the next time I see one close-up).

[1] As far as what the marker would indicate, it could be anything. Such as "This pole has a little yellow net thing on it."

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Okay, when I said that googling turned up squat, it turns out that my google kung-fu simply was not good enough.

I found this site, created by a guy with a desultory interest in utility poles:

The Unofficial Utility Pole Page

In his links section, I found link to a company called Almetek, which makes stuff similar to Premax. On Almetek's site, I found this:

Almetek reflective grids

Scroll down inside the frame on the page that comes up.

So they are reflective after all! I suppose if I had noticed that to begin with, it would have been a no-brainer....

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Thanks for the update and new information. Jim, we are never too old nor been in the "business" too long to not learn something new everyday....

:toothy: :thumb:

I just figured it was some redneck method of catching "dropped dial tone"... :rofl:

Dave, I'd think that "dropped dial tone" would be collected in something that resembled the buckets the Maple sap collectors use. John C.

:rofl: That must be where the Grade "D" comes from that we sell & ship State-side. :rofl:

We keep the best for us, you know.

Well, that explains why it no longer tastes like it did when I was a kid in NY state! Or when we produced it ourselves in the MO Ozarks. It boils down 40 to 1! When you're trotting through the maple grove collecting on a warm day after an overnight freeze, The Saps're Running to keep up with the Running Sap! Ya' know, I sure got to do a lot of 'country' things as a 'city boy' that even 'country boys' didn't get to do.