Don't Taze Me Son!!!

After three days of sitting around inside it finally cleared off today and my Mother was in high gear wanting to get her useless nags out into the hay field for Winter.

Of course there is at least another two days of work getting everything ready and we still needed a 16 foot gate and a solar powered electric fence charger before I can finish the whole thing.

She showed up bright and early this morning with her debit card dragging me out of bed.

Our first stop was Tractor Supply to pick up her new solar fence charger and some new plastic clips. I already have all the posts put in place for the electric fence side but the charger requires three days in full sun before it will be ready to go.

So I set the charger out to get all juiced up and then it was a trip in the other direction to the local MFA to buy a new gate.

We walk into the MFA and Mom heads off to the electric fence section. Why? We already have all the electric fence stuff I need to build her fence for her. She whined and pleaded with me to not put the top strand of barbed wire on that section and I reluctantly agreed since it is only a temporary section anyway.

This is another sign of horse people not seeing things clearly. They would rather spend 20 times more on a fence because they are afraid the useless animals will rub on the barbed wire. All fine and good until some deer herd crashes through the electric wire and you got horses running around the countryside. Ten years ago I would have just called her at O-Dark-Thirty to go chasing her own horses around but these days she can't do it. So guess who gets to run em down now?

Anyway my Mother is in love with electric fence and like Mrs. PP in a shoe store she has to go drool over electric fence accessories every chance she gets. It's much worse now that we bought the place for her because now she has money to burn. I can't complain though since most of that money she is burning through is going into the place for a change and she buys me neat new specialty tools to do all this work for her. I can't resist someone buying me tools.

More on the specialty tools later.

So I am standing there waiting for her to get her electric fence fix being bored and what suddenly springs up next to my elbow? Why a cattle prod.  I don't know how it got there it just magically appeared.

OOOOO Isn't that neat!!!!

I pick the thing up and put my hand out at the little electric forked end and push the button. Nothing happens. Well I really didn't expect the thing to go off otherwise I wouldn't have tried to shock my finger with it. I put it back and my Mother is still looking at electric fence stuff we already have.

Grrrrrrrr.

After a few hours (Ok Minutes but it seemed like hours) I told her if she didn't get moving I was gonna poke her with the cattle prod.

She ignored me.

I reached over and picked up the cattle prod and poked her in the butt with it.

The damned thing went off with snap.

There were two of them sitting there. I guess the second one I grabbed had a charge on it.

I haven't seen my Mother move so fast in 20 years. :)

You don't know how many times I have wanted to hit her with a cattle prod on purpose over the years and now I finally got to do it and only when I didn't really mean to.

Luckily there wasn't much of a charge on the thing. She didn't drop to the floor and flop around like a fish or anything but it did get her moving and we got the new gate purchased.

When we finally got back home it was time for me to get to work on the back side of the fence. She doesn't have a choice on that part it is barbed wire or nothing back there. I spent the rest of the day replacing T-posts, adding a few more in and pulling wire with a come-along off the hitch of my truck. The backside fence is finished more or less. I wouldn't put cattle in it but it should be fine for horses.

Tomorrow I hang the gate and run the electric fence wire.

BTW my Step Dad said he always wanted to cattle prod my Mother too but that brought up images that I really didn't want to think about.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!