It's War!

ok. We've been pretty lax about the electric fence...only wrapping the corn in it two weeks ago - and pulling that down after the corn was in. Years ago when we invested in this fence, the deer were playing fast and loose with things in the garden and we had to pull out the big guns. THen the golf course went up, and more subdivisions nearby, and there were less deer. Maybe that, and maybe they just knew better with the fence out there than to bother us. Either way, we haven't really needed it full time for a while. No more. Went out to check the precious watermelons...and this is what we found: Hmmmm....big scratching going on. Something trying to get into the melons.
oh no...an actual hole. This is very bad news. Looks like raccoons have made their way from the fenceline...very, very bad. Looks like the raccoons are partial to the yellow melons. And they don't EVEN care if they're ripe yet! Sure enough. Almost every yellow melon we found had been messed with, punctured, or totally destroyed! Something must be done. today, not tomorrow.
It was late in the evening. All we could do the first night was chain poor old Dude out there in the melons. I felt sorry for him, but Will assured me Dude didn't really care that much. I spoil him plenty enough the rest of the time. Well, by 1:00 a.m., Dude was barking his fool head off, and Will had to go out there and let him loose, for fear we'd wake the neighbors. We have very nice neighbors and they probably wouldn't even complain, but that's not a very neighborly thing to subject people to, the barking of your dog.
So the next day I went to the Tractor Supply to pick up half a mile of 17 gauge steel wire..Will came home from work and weed-eated around the fenceline. I rolled up all of the old wire from around the perimeter of the garden. (that's a long way). A lot of it was tangled and broken and it's a very unwieldy business, rolling up that wire. I ran off to get gas for the big mower. Will mowed. Then we worked on stringing three strands close to the bottom of the fence posts. It was late, late in the evening by then. the roll of wire weighs a billion pounds and is generally uncooperative. Will rolled it out and I walked behind, fastening it to the clips. And it was so terribly, breathlessly hot. Around the garden we went, once, twice, three times. It was slow work and it was almost completely dark. Even past eight o'clock at night, sweat was literally dripping off of us onto the ground. But we got it done. That night, we envisioned some surprised and frustrated raccoons out there. I'm sure one or two got zinged. We knew the fence wouldn't actually kill a raccoon, but we could always joke about dinner the next night, and cooking what around here is know as 'your outdoor meats'.