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Harry Chickpea · 04-08-2006, 10:53 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible

"William L. Rose" wrote:

In article ,
(Harry Chickpea) wrote:

"William L. Rose" wrote:

Just my 2¢, but I hope your ready for the dead birds. The voltage (It's
really the amperage you need to be concerned with.) that will put bambi
on his butt is gonna' fry "tweety bird" and friends (four and two
legged) that come into contact with it. You may be down with the
collateral damage but passer-bys, neighbors, grand kids, ect., may see
you in a whole, brand new light. Birds also help clean up insects in the
garden, so think about unintended consequences.

Haven't you ever seen birds on power lines? The voltage and ampreage
are a heck of a lot more than electric fences.

Here is a place where you can read how the fences work.:
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex611

Alright, show's over. Move it along. Move it along. Show's over.

My god, where did all them pitchforks and torches come from? This seemed
like such a friendly little news group.

So electric fences have progressed since I ran off and became a Luddite,
good.

Mr. Om says he uses a double hot wire around his yard. Does that mean
two hot wires, or one hot and one ground? Grounding isn't an issue? I
also see that some fences only zap for a limited duration, like a
fraction of a second. Sounds reasonable. I would still worry about the
amount of voltage that can get a deer's attention and the amount that
could throw a half ounce bird into cardiac arrhythmia. But that's
probably just me. If no one has seen that, then it must not be a big
deal. No complaints from the grandkids or do they like getting their
hair to stand on end?

As far as birds and squirrels on the power lines, occasionally they do
find a ground and you can hear the transformer blow for miles. They
never make that mistake twice. But that really doesn't relate to the
discussion at hand.

Oh, before I forget, thanks Mr. Om for the web site. There's always
something to learn. Slow down and you get left behind. When I got out of
school, there were three states of "matter" in physics and two
"Kingdoms" in biology. Now I find that plasma has been added to gas,
liquid, solid, and Kingdom Fungi, Kingdom Monera, and Kingdom Protista
have been added to Kingdom Animalia, and Kingdom Plantae.

Like to chat, but I gotta' run.

Later.

Plasma was added a while back. Guess I better not bring up the
Bose-Einstein condensate... :-)

.... ah what the heck:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate

I suspect part of the reason for all the responses is that not many
people want to be songbird killers, or thought of as being songbird
killers. If there were pitchforks (which I didn't see) they would
have been aimed at that, rather than directly at you. Like you said,
we all just try to keep learning, and most of us are more interested
in helping people out than re-enacting a boring scene from
Frankenstein.

ps, Wasn't Kingdom Monera in Buck Rogers?