Pholcus phalangioides, a common cellar spider, plucks its way through the man-made web onto the surface of a somewhat corroded circuit board. In one terribly unfortunate moment, the bulbous little arachnid places one of its eight filament legs on the hot lead of a strategically soldered resistor and another spindly leg on a ground lug. The now-altered value of the resistor allows a surge of current to take out other critical components along the circuit path and another sentinel of two meter Amateur Radio fades to black. The repeater is dead. The spider is one with Buddha.
Nobody is aware.
Nobody to care. Now, you are amazed on a given night when you locate more than one repeater whirring with words and ideas and God forbid you should look for talk past the 11 o'clock hour. All the good hammies are watching the neeeeews or are alseep. I am told that in the big Metros Amateur Radio is very much alive and well, that VHF and UHF repeaters are booked solid with good QSO and this may be true for the moment. In our own backyard, the silence roars in the RF desert.