Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge The electric fence

A few months ago, I heard about burglaries increasing dramatically in our city. We already had a standard 6 ft. fence around the yard, but just to make sure this never happened to me, I decided to get one of those electric wires (for cows and such) and run it along the top of the fence.

Actually, I got a little carried away at the store and ended up with the biggest cattle charger Tractor Supply had, intended for 26 miles of fence. I also opted for the 8 ft. long ground rod, and drove it 7.5 feet into the ground.
The sales guy said that the ground rod was the key, the more you have in the ground, the better the fence works. So how could this go wrong, you might ask?

Well, one fine summer day I'm mowing the back yard with my cheapo Wal-Mart 6 hp big wheel push mower. The hot wire to the fence was broken and laying in the yard. I thought for a second and decided that I remembered unplugging the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached down to grab it, in order to move it out of the way. Apparently, I hadn't unplugged it after all.

Now I'm standing there, I've got the running lawn mower in my right hand and the 1.7 giga-volt fence wire in the other. Keep in mind the charger is about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside down cow, on fire, on the cover. Time stood still.

The first thing I notice is my pecker trying to climb up the front side of my body. My ears curled downwards and I could feel the lawn mower ignition firing in the backside of my brain. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine. It seems as though the fence charger and the piece of ****** lawn mower were battling it out over which would take control my electrical impulses.

Smoke. I remember smelling smoke. I used to think that one could not possibly crap, pee, and vomit, all at the same time. I now know different. Not only did I do all three at once, but my bowels emptied 3 different times in less than one second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel movement, where time is creeping along and you're all leaned back and BAM BAM BAM, you just crapped your pants 3 times. It seemed like there were minutes in between but in reality it was so close together it was like exhaust pulses from a big block Chevy turning 8000 rpm.

At this point I'm about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the fence wire. My hand is tightly wrapped around the wire palm down, so I can't let go. I grew up on a farm and thought I knew all about electric fences.....but Dad always had those pieces of ****** chargers made by International or whoever that were like 9 volts and just kinda tickled. With this one, I physically could not let go. The 8 foot long ground rod is now accepting signals from me through the permadamp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this point I'm thinking I'm going to have to just man up and take it until the lawn mower runs out of gas. '******!,' I think, as I remember I just filled the tank! Now the lawn mower is starting to run rough. It had settled into a loping run pattern as if it had some kind of big lawn mower race cam in it. Covered in poop, pee, and with my vomit on my chest I think 'Oh God, please die... Pleeeeaze die'. But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the go command from its owner's right foot.

So here I am in the middle of July, 104 degrees, 90% humidity, standing in my own backyard, begging God to kill me. God did not take me that day.....he left me there covered in my own fluids to writhe in the misery that my own stupidity had created. I honestly don't know how I got loose from the wire...I came to lying on the ground. The lawn mower, silent beside me, had apparently finally run itself out of gas. Several hours must have passed, due to the severity of the new sunburn on the left side of my face. There were two large dead grass spots where I had originally been standing, and then another long skinny dead spot where the wire had laid while I was on the ground still holding on to it. I can only assume that I finally had a seizure or something and in the resulting thrashing had somehow managed to mercifully separate me from the wire.

Upon waking from my electrically induced coma I realized a few things:
1- Several of my teeth feel kind of loose and at least three of them seem to have moved around a bit.
2- I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not the left, just the right).
3- A mixture of sun-dried poop, pee, and vomit smells worse than I thought something could.
4- My left eye will not open.
5- My right eye will not close.
6- My nuts are sore and shrunken, although they feel like they are each a foot in diameter.
7- The lawn mower runs like a sumbitch now. Seriously! I think our little session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it has run better than new since that day.
8- Oh yeah, and I can turn on the TV in the game room by farting while thinking of the number 4 (still don't understand this???)

That day changed my life. I now have a newfound respect for all things electrical. I also appreciate the little things more, like being able to control my eye lids and the other parts and systems of my body. Now of course, I always triple check to make sure the fence is unplugged before I mow. But most of all now, when I have nothing better to do, I just visualize the day when a burglar actually does try to come over that fence. That always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over... and a slight tingling sensation.