We’ve had no electric fences at ground level around here since I entered my post-pig phase. (Guys my age, I decided, shouldn’t raise animals bigger than they are.) When the last pigs went, their two-strand electric sty fence did, too.

That left only a single live strand circling the top of the old fence that enclosed Anne’s big garden. This spring, when we replaced that fence with a new massive deer barrier, there seemed no need to top its eight-foot height with a wire. And so, I thought, my time tending transformers and solar batteries had come to an end. No more need for electric defenses.

I had forgotten about raccoons. We’d never been troubled by them before, probably because we’ve never raised sweet corn. But this year Anne put in a "three sisters bed," with squash and green beans growing among corn plants.

It’s a great Native American symbiosis: Beans and squash mature before the corn shades them out, but then the corn gives them something to climb.

The scheme worked just fine, and about two weeks ago the corn ears finally looked plump and ready to pick. "Tomorrow’s the day," we said to one another, and I imagined that sweet corn with burgers off the grill and a salad of Anne’s lettuce, tomatoes, and cukes.

As it turned out, tomorrow was a day too late. Pint-sized masked bandits had been watching that corn, too, from the shelter of the nearby woods. And the night before our planned harvest, they carried out theirs, scaling the eight-foot fence, ravaging the ears, then dragging their stuffed selves up and over the fence again.

Anne took the disaster well_a lot better than I did. I wanted revenge, or at least protection from the raccoons’ next foray. For a few ears were still maturing. Those dastards would be back. But I’d be ready.

I had powered the old garden fence wire with a solar battery, but that takes three days of sunshine to rev up. And so I fell back on the sty equipment. I ran a lead cord from the barn and connected it to the old transformer that used to hum evilly in the pig shed. That unit shoots enough voltage to make a sow stand on tiptoe; and it had done the same to me, more than once. After installing the transformer on a corner post, I attached parallel strands of wire and ran them around the outside of the garden fence, one at two feet off the ground, one at four. Then I turned on the power in the barn.

I ambled back to the house imagining one of those marauders creeping through the grass to climb the fence. He stops, and, curious, noses at a new wire. Wahoo! I could almost hear the squeak, see that corn thief knocked on his butt. Maybe it’s shameful, but I felt glee that night as I went to bed.

And the system worked. I don’t know just what happened in the dark, but the corn was spared. And it hasn’t been bothered since. I’m still imagining that first raccoon running wide-eyed back to the nest. "Holy crap!" he tells the others. "Don’t go near that fence! Corn’s not worth it!"

I’ve left the wire charged, though, just in case somebody else tries it. And, ironically, somebody else did. It was Blue. I wasn’t there, but Anne gave me a graphic report.

She’d had Blue out in the field abutting the garden, putting him through his agility paces.

He’d been leaping over barriers of garden chairs, sailing through the air over sawhorses. Blue’s good at agility and even got to show off a bit at the Farmer’s Museum Harvest Fest dog show. People clapped heartily for him_and which of us doggies doesn’t love that?

The Museum’s grand new carousel had made this year’s dog demonstration move south, beyond the church and the farmstead, and into the pasture of the oxen; the big beasts had been shifted for the weekend to another field. The ox field site caused some trouble. There were enough new smells and sodden spots out there to turn any dog’s head. But Blue, to his credit, managed to stay on task. That dog does love to perform.

Well, back to our own field. When Blue finished up his practice with Anne, he trotted jauntily over to the garden fence, very pleased with himself. Pleased enough to pause and fire himself a three-legged salute.

According to Anne, there was a sharp yelp and a jump that could have cleared two garden chairs. Our poor dog had aimed his stream right onto the lower charged wire. That produced the same effect that country boys hope for when they urge city-bred cousins to "pee on the wire and watch the sparks."

There really are no sparks; but the effect is, well, unforgettable.

That’s why, unlike Anne, I don’t worry about Blue making the same mistake again. "The burnt child dreadeth the fire," they say. Yeah. And a zapped dog watches his aim.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com