Wily Widget [Issue 2, October 2009]                                                                                            Previous Issues     
  

Fence Alarm

It seemed to Wily that frantic phone calls from clients always tended to come in the morning.  He had just taken his first sip of morning coffee when the phone rang.  It was from a cattle rancher in Montana.  It was deer hunting season in Montana and this rancher was fed up with hunters cutting his barbed wire fence, to gain entrance onto his properly.  He called and wanted to know if there was any way he could receive an alarm signal whenever the fence was cut.  The rancher had looked on the Internet and couldn’t find anything that seemed appropriate for him.  After talking to several people, Wily’s name was suggested.  

Wily said he might take on the project, but needed some more information.  The fence was a classic cedar post with 4 barbed wires.  The fence posts were spread out 12 to 16 feet.  Most often, the hunters would shoot a deer on the rancher’s property from the road and then cut the fence, so they could drive up to the carcass to haul it away.  They often did this opportunity hunting early in the morning and were in and out before the rancher even got up.  Shooting from the road toward his ranch was against the law and so was cutting the fence.  But that did not stop the hunters from doing it anyway.  The rancher wanted to know the second the fence was cut, so he could confront the poachers.