Flashing Light Keeps Raccoons Out

Flashing Light Keeps Raccoons Out MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Pest Animals 34-5-27 After trying just about every trick in the book to keep raccoons out of sweet corn, Elroy Lindaas, Mayville, N. Dak., hit upon a simple solution that works. He uses a homemade "flashing light" attachment for electric fences to scare off night predators. He simply hangs a burned out, 4-ft. long, 40-watt fluorescent bulb at a place where raccoons usually cross. The bulb lights up with each surge of the fence charger and doesn't reduce strength of the electrical charge going through the fence. "The flashing light also serves as a distant night signal to tell me if the fence is on and working properly," says Lindaas. "I solder a copper wire to the electrode prongs at each end of the bulb in a hook fashion. I place one hook over the hot wire on my electric barbed wire fence, and the other hook on anything that will serve as a ground, such as a steel post. The light will flash, even if it's burned out, because the mercury vapor is still inside it." The flashing light can attract attention from 2-legged critters, too. "One time an elderly neighbor lady drove into my yard and to warn me there was a strange light flashing in my garden. She thought it might be a UFO." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Elroy N. Lindaas, 735 153rd Ave. N.E., Mayville, N. Dak. 58257 (ph 701 786-3064; enl@polarcomm.com).

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