Ken Allan 
Vegetable
Garden
Raccoon Revenge
One of my fall chores is to take down the electric fence around the corn, and then rototill the rows of corn. I always try to get this done in the fall because the corn stalks break down very quickly if chewed up by the tiller in the fall. It doesn't work so well if I leave the stalks standing through the winter and till them in the spring.
When I started taking down the electric fence this year, I discovered that half of the wire had been shredded. The wire was lying on the ground and had been ripped apart in many pieces from one foot long to ten feet long. The electric fence wire is composed of four strands, interwoven. Two strands are bare wires which conduct the electricity and deliver the shock. The other two strands are plastic-covered thread.
The damage might have been done by a vandal with dull wire cutters but I don't think so. A person yanking on the wires, in addition to breaking the wires, would have pulled up some of the fence posts (easy to do). No posts were pulled out. There was evidence of considerable yanking but it was all done at ground level. My hypothesis is that the local raccoons paid many visits to the corn patch (during corn season) and got shocked each time they tested the fence. So they built up a considerable resentment towards the fence. The power was off for the month that had passed after the last of the corn was harvested. When they discovered this, they decided to punish the fence.