Electric warfare

By Jack Elliott
Correspondent

Ah it’s the sweet corn season again. Juicy, tender, delicious, and dare I say, an even better laxative than sweet cherries. At the debating table in the Bakery in Drizzle Creek the other morning Moose was in usual sour mood, whining and griping about most everything. He’s generally like this and then it hit me- his problem- constipation.
I’m going to go out and pick him a couple dozen ears and see if this won’t sweeten his disposition.
With the sub-Arctic climate we’ve experienced this summer, local sweet corn is a scarce commodity and let’s face it, that fodder they import from the south just doesn’t cut it. A week on the truck and a week in the store make it just about ready for the silo but not for the dinner table.
Fortunately for Moose, there is me- sweet corn producer extraordinaire. I had a crop in my secret patch up north of the tracks I have been tilling and coaxing along since spring pretended to come back there a few months ago. Extra drainage ditches and enough seed fungicide to cure half the rot and mildew in the civilized world brought results. By early August things were beginning to tassel, cobs formed and started to fill. Then I started to worry.
Varmints. The four legged kind, skunks, raccoons and bears are just pure hell on the corn patch as any gardener worth his salt knows. In past years, a heavy planting of pumpkin and squash vines in the patch had kept predations down. Seems the four legged kind didn’t like all those prickly vines.
The two legged varmints found it too difficult to run through the patch in the dark, and kept tripping and sprawling. Of course it’s just as well they did, as Len was pretty quick on the trigger of the old 12 gauge he is prone to discharge over the patch on a regular basis. Not everybody has their own personal corn patch guard.
But this year, I went high tech- an electric fence. I strung the wire around the patch and considered how to electrify it. At first, I had considered tapping straight into Hydro None’s transmission line running by the patch. But then reconsidered. I don’t think those poles could stand the strain of another wire stretching on them. Besides Junior isn’t around to hot wire it for me.
Scrounger solved the problem by loaning me an electric fence charger. It only took about 300 ft of extension cord stretched across Len’s lawn. If you’re out there, don’t step in any of the puddles without your rubber boots on.
I hooked up the unit and wired another transformer into the line to hop up the output, but the arcing sparks at the insulators kept setting the posts on fire and the neighbours were complaining about the TV interference. On the plus side it did neuter four stray cats and one yapping ankle-biter. But I relented and set it back from kill to stun.
That it works, have no doubts. I’ll show you the burn marks on my leg and you may have noted the curled hair and strange twitch developed by some of the garden skulkers in the community.
The raccoons have been kept pretty much at bay and I’ll be delivering a dozen over to Moose later this week. See if his mood has sweetened any, but I’ll warn you- DON”T startle him. I’m not sure his sphincters are all that well trained just yet.