Zap
Friday September 08th 2023, 8:44 pm
Filed under: Life

The tennis racket bug zapper: it works better on small insects but it was all I had. By what on earth opening had that hornet even gotten in here? It was huge!

And then it was against the window with that bug zapper pinning it down but it wanted to just keep right on going, so I did, too, arm stretched, finger on the button, not daring to let up to check on the thing.

Finally, after a good minute or so, I decided my best bet was to open the slider with my other hand and try to sweep it out of here.

But it wouldn’t go.

I smacked the zapper gently on something outside. It clung. I thwapped hard. It clung. Finally I dared look a little closer, and it had indeed given up the ghost once it had been zapped long enough. Thwap! I got it to fall out and made a mental offering to the birds out there, but it is clear they prefer their meals sushi style. It’s a raw deal.

Okay, so all that happened, and shortly thereafter I went to go water my trees.

Every time I touched the handle on that slider I got a little shock. What?

The first time, I thought, well that was odd, but by the sixth time (I go out and move the hose from tree to tree and set a timer for three minutes, come inside, repeat for each) it was clearly a thing. Huh.

We had that door repaired a few years ago and I’d never noticed that the inside handle is metal while the outside one is plastic.

I started opening the door from inside by pushing along the window, then coming back in using the handle because that side was fine.

I took a basic college course in electricity and none of this makes any sense to me, so I asked the resident geek and it made no sense to him either. Shocking, I know.

So it’s been a few hours now, I typed all this, and had to go see if it would still do that if I touched it. It did not. Well yay.

But still: why? I mean, if you could store electricity in glass who would need batteries? The zapper never touched that handle. So strange.


3 Comments so far
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That’s so weird!

Comment by ccr in MA 09.09.23 @ 8:10 am

… something-something static electricity? But 6 zaps and no more is weird. (that said, now I’m wondering whether the zap was the handle itself, or *you* touching any metal – was there any other metal involved in your round? Because it can take multiple shocks to wear off one’s own charge of static electricity sometimes, although again, 6 is a lot…)(but possibly the glass+handle having one direction of a charge and you holding the other… oh, I don’t know.)

Comment by KC 09.09.23 @ 9:17 am

My resident knows-a-bit-about-electricity guy thinks you built up a static charge holding the zapper. Then zapped back when you touched the metal handle. Although 6 times seems a bit much, probably the static added to your zappy personality!

Comment by DebbieR 09.09.23 @ 11:34 am



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