Re: Of Mice and HV (fwd)

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Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxxxx>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:19:17 -0700
From: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Of Mice and HV (fwd)

I guess it depends on what you consider "clean". I think it's going to be 
difficult to get guaranteed kills without filling the room with burning 
hair/rat meat smell."

	I have a couple of words to add here.  Several years ago we had a big problem with skunks and possums digging up our newly-planted back yard - we're only a block from a big golf course where wild animals of all sorts thrive.  I tried rigging a perimeter fence powered by a capacitor discharge ignition coil which delivered about a 1/4" spark at 100 pps.  First night it stopped them, second night they just walked through the wire.  Next try was to take a 9 kV 60 ma NST, rectify half of it to get about 6 kV DC, charge a 1/2 ufd capacitor with that and connect it to the wires.  Mighty fat spark when shorted to ground.  Again, stopped em for a couple of nights and then they were back in full force.  Final act of desperation was just to connect the 4500 VAC directly to the wires without current limiting.  Got about 4 skunks, 4 possums, and 2 rats[!!!] but finally one night we woke up to a horrid smell of burning hair and flesh which filled the night air throughout the neighborhood.  One of the skunks had managed to get caught in the wires and fry itself literally.  When I went to investigate there was still arcing where the wires were wound around the corpse.  After that I rigged a ground current relay and timer to shut off the input to the transformer after 20 seconds of short circuit.  No further small problems after that but in total we killed about 14 skunks and possums.  In our area the SPCA picks up the remains of dead animals regardless of cause.  Our disposal procedure was to have my wife hold a big plastic sack while I picked up the body with another one turned inside-out, inverted the bag to hold the body and then stuck it in the other sack to double bag it.  Tie up the top and leave it by the curb for SPCA to pick up the next morning.  After a few pickups the "man from SPCA" told my wife something like "I know you have something in the back yard that's killing these things but I don't know what it is - just put em out front and I'll pick em up".  About that time whatever it was that attracted the critters seems to have gone away and we haven't had trouble since.

	One non-electric incident happened.  I had put a particularly big corpse in a bag at the curb on the morning of local trash pickup.  We have people who cruise the streets looking into trash cans and picking up whatever treasures they may find.  On this particular morning when I drove out early to go to work I noticed the bag was gone (way before trash men time) and a car was crusing along down the street a way.  Only thing we ever figured out was that someone must have picked up the whole bag and thrown it in the trunk of the car for later inspection.  Always wished I'd been around when the bag was opened!!!

Ed

P.S. Don't poison rats or mice in the house - they'll get even by crawling
into the walls to die, leaving you with a lingering reminder of their
presence..............................