Tonight was the night of chores.
All rabbit cages were cleaned, water bottles topped off, pellets and night hay given. Turnout pen is lined with wire to prevent Roxanne's kits from escaping until I finish their cages. One has a cage - she was the adventuress who I could not catch, hence her show name "Can't Stop a Prius". I finally caught her when she went into the barn to socialize and I cornered her. She raked my arms with her back claws for good measure. The other kits are happy exploring the hutches, the hay, the water and the pellets and they are racing around, doing explosive binkies.
Took the geese to the pond with Andy and he had a laugh taping them as they followed me as they extend their wings and waddle very fast when they run (He could have been laughing at me as I was probably waddling as well). Got them back into their electric pen and realized after I turned it on there was no juice in the fence or the main electric fence that supplies the zappage.
It is now getting dark and I run to see if Andy has a tester. No, he doesn't - odd for an electrical major at college and electrical company employee not to have one in his tool kit but he knows all about polarity and grounds and AC and DC and said what he had would not work on the electric fence(AC/DC - weren't they a heavy metal band in the 70s and 80s?
).
Now it's a trip to the fencer, which is covered by weeds and brush but once I got it cleared, the little light was flashing and it was making its customary clicking noise.
Run to power source and unplug.
Opt to go through horse pen - wading through manure is a lot better than reaching into brush where there might be big spiders... plus we do not have mosquitoes... they were buzzing hypodermic needles with wings tonight.
Find a broken wire - trudge back through manure, through the fence for a new wire in my tool box, trudge back to fencer, hook up new wire and then another trudge back to the power source. Plug in and the resulting pop made Weatherly jump a mile and look out the barn door to see if Nefertiti got zapped but she was quietly eating hay.
Lots of arcs all over the tape where slugs were frying when they touched the T posts and where the electric net was meeting the tape. Ed, my special goose, walked up to the fence and gave it a good bite but nothing happened. I grabbed my plastic pitchfork and boldly tugged on the spring loaded connector, which lit up like a Christmas candle. Spring inside was broken or arcing in the plastic casing. Luckily there was a spare handle - back to power source, unplug, then take off old handle and replace with new one. Realized that position was too close to the connector wires and I had an arcing sparkler show now. The ducks and geese backed off warily.
Another stab with the pitchfork and the arcing slowed but it was not right so I extracted the live handle with the fork, repositioned it and Ed obliged by pecking at the fence and getting a zap, which was followed by an indignant peep/squeak. Success - it was up and running again.
Mental note to self - check all connectors this weekend and have boys and hubby clear all the brush and weeds from the line. Have to do Weatherly's lesson tomorrow but that will be easy since I tackled the tough stuff today.
Time for bed...
Denise
Denise
