An electric fence surrounds our horse field. I don’t know why, but visitors, and especially visitors from urban areas find that the fence holds a strange and compelling fascination for them.
This is not a wimpy little dog fence either, but a livestock type fence good enough for a couple of thousand acres. We fence in about ten.
So my friends from NY are over, as well as some of my wife’s family. There’s some kids, too, and they’re all looking at the horses.
“Is that an electric fence?” I get asked.
“Yup.”
“Does it hurt?” is always the inevitable next question.
“Yup.”
“Is it on now?”
Here I always smile disingenuously. “Oh no, it’s not on (the fence is always on.”) I lie.
“Really?”
“Yup.”
The rest is written in stone. They walk over to the fence, and put their hand real close to it, but they just can’t seem to bring themselves to touch it. They look at me nervously, adults and kids alike, but they don’t touch the fence. I smile predatorily which doesn’t really help.
Suddenly somebody gets the bright idea “If it’s not on, why don’t you touch it and show us?” Now they think they have me dead to rights.
“Ok. Sure.” I reply.
Now anybody that has an electric fence knows that it’s not continuous. The charge comes out in pulses. Sometimes and in certain places you can pick up the cues as to the fences pulses. In this case we were near the barn, and by listening carefully I could hear the innocuous and faint on-off clicking of the fence charge box in the barn.
I walk up to the fence casually, listening carefully, and place my hand on the fence, leaving it there for the large part of a second.
“See?” I say removing my hand a split second before a gazillion volts would have had me jerking on the ground (we call this “doing the chicken”)
"Oh, at this point everybody loses interest. Nobody bothers to touch the fence. It’s no fun anymore now that it’s not dangerous. But my mission is accomplished. Now they’re not wary.
“Want to feed the horses some carrots?” I ask.
“Sure?” everybody responds.
I whistle for the horses who coming running up, and give everybody a carrot. I show them how to do it, handing a carrot over the fence to a horse, who promptly swallows it after one bite.
“Go ahead,” I say.
They start handing carrots over the fence. It’s only a matter of time.
My wife’s uncle Sam taps the fence to make sure it’s off and happens to catch it in between pulses. Thus reassured, he leans into it to offer a carrot to Jasper, our bay quarterhorse.
“Look at the nice horsey, isn’t he BZZZZAAAPPPP! Ahhhh! Ug-ug-ug-ug-ug-ug!” Sam’s doing the chicken.
Screams. Terror. Panic. Mayhem.
Sam’s Ok, but… ummmm, slightly stunned. The fence has lots of volts, but few amps. It’s pretty safe. Nobody’s died or gotten hurt, yet.
I apologize profusely, and calm everybody down.
“I thought it was off,” I say.
Oddly, this is how I train the horses to respect the fence. When we get a new horse I offer it a carrot. It walks into the wire. You need to do this exactly once, and the horse will never touch the fence again. People though aren’t that smart.
“It looks like that thing was on!” Somebody’ll say.
“Oops,” I’ll confirm.
They all gather around Sam. “Did it hurt?” they all want to know.
Truth be told, it doesn’t hurt, not that that matters. Being electrocuted doesn’t elicit a pain response. It’s something else. Like every nerve firing at once. Something very unpleasant, so it might as well be pain. Nobody likes it.
Sam tries to explain, and they all think he’s lying when he says it didn’t really hurt. They all saw him scream. They all saw him do the chicken.
I wait for the moment. It will only come once, and I have to be perfect to get them to fall for it.
“If you want to know what it feels like without getting hurt,” I say. “All you have to do is all hold hands and let one person touch the fence. If there’s ten of you, you’ll only get 1/10th the shock.”
This is of course a despicable lie.
They’re fascinated. They want to try it. But, what if I’m lying?
“I’m surprised you’d impugn my integrity,” I say a little huffily, not actually surprised at all. I have no honor when perpetrating a practical joke. I’ll prove it, though. “Everybody link hands and grab my hand, and then I’ll touch the fence. Just don’t let anybody let go and leave me taking the whole shock, ok.”
Everybody finally agrees that this a good plan. How could I lie? It must be ok, if I’m going to be the one grabbing the fence, right?
So they all link up and grab my hand. I hold on tight and grit my teeth. I know what’s coming, but you have to be willing to suffer for your art, don’t you?
Still, I do have a trick, an ace of sorts. We get near the Horse fence, and right before I grab it I step up onto the concrete slab. It’s something of an insulator and protects me from the full force of the shock.
Everybody else, all 8 of them are standing on the ground. You will note dear reader that “ground” has a very special meaning as far as electricity is concerned. They are all about to learn this meaning.
I grab the fence and grit my teeth. There’s a pause.
BBZZZZAAAAAP! My teeth hum. I grunt. I let go, and breathe deep.
Three people are doing the chicken. One fourteen year old boy is crying. Everybody else is hopping around in a painful panic. Looks like Brandon peed himself.
There’ll be a moment when they all recover when they try to blame me, or wonder if I did it on purpose.
I’ll just say that was the spread out shock, what are they pussies? and that’ll protect me.
Perfect. My art. Days when I get to do this are all too rare, but they’re what life’s all about.