or maybe it was a capybara...

There are power lines that run over the front of our yard... a few feet in from the property line. There are also power lines across the street. This morning I was sitting in the living room checking my email, when I saw something moving... "scurrying" if you will... out of the corner of my eye. There was a tiny gap through the open-backed bookcase where I could see out the window, out to where the power lines are. And because of the angle, I thought I was looking at the powerlines way across the street rather than the ones in my own yard. As a result, I perceived the animal scurrying across the power lines as being far away, when in reality he was quite close. The upshot of this perceptual misalignment was a very convincing optical illusion that had me convinced, for a brief moment, that I had just seen a beaver run across a power line.

Turns out it was just a squirrel, so... no need to be alarmed, kids... there is no highly-evolved commando-beaver uprising going on.

Not YET anyway...