Elephants are scared of bee fences
In Kenya, farmers hang beehives along wire fences to keep elephants out of their crops. A nine-year study of farms near Tsavo East found elephants avoided the beehive fences up to 86% of the time in peak crop season, and the farmers sold the honey. More than 14,000 hives now guard 97 sites across Africa and Asia.
Source: University of Oxford
The rabbits got there first
Western Australia built 3,256 km of rabbit-proof fence between 1902 and 1907. The No. 1 Fence alone runs 1,833 km and is called the longest unbroken fence in the world. As a rabbit barrier it failed: rabbits were already hopping past it while it was still being built.
Source: Wikipedia: Rabbit-proof fence
Farmers used to grow their fences
Before barbed wire arrived in 1874, Plains farmers planted thorny Osage orange hedges that were promised to be “horse high, bull-strong, and hog-tight” in four years. Kansas landowners planted nearly 40,000 miles of them between 1865 and 1939.
2,400 kinds of barbed wire
La Crosse, Kansas, calls itself the “Barbed Wire Capital of the World.” Its Kansas Barbed Wire Museum, open since 1970, displays more than 2,400 different forms of the wire.
The fence that makes you laugh
A ha-ha is a fence sunk into a ditch, so it keeps livestock off the lawn without blocking the view. A 1709 French gardening book says the name comes from the surprise of coming upon one, which “makes one laugh, Ha! Ha!” George Washington had them at Mount Vernon, and the Washington Monument got a modern one in 2005.
Source: Wikipedia: Ha-ha
Some towns still elect fence viewers
Massachusetts towns still appoint “fence viewers,” an office dating to 1647, to settle arguments between neighbors over shared fences. The job pays $5 per day of work. One newly appointed viewer said that if he’s ever called, he’ll frame the five dollars.
Source: Greenfield Recorder
A fence with no posts, invented next door
The zigzag split-rail “worm” fence needs no posts: the rails rest on each other at angles and hold themselves up. It’s traced to Finnish settlers of New Sweden, the 1600s colony along the Delaware River, which makes it about as local as a fence design gets. Volunteers at Valley Forge still rebuild it by hand.
Source: Wikipedia: Split-rail fence
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