The bug zapper from hell

Something we didn’t have at my house was one of those cool purple bug zapping things. It mezmorized me watching one of those things at the public pool luring bug to there fiery death, “BuuuZzzz…Zap”. So I decide build one. The concept is to have two parallel screens with a high voltage difference between them. Just like scuffing your feet on the carpet and getting a zap on the first metal object you touch, the bug zapper needed about one thousand volts of energy. The key is the fact that one thousand volt is not enough to jump across the screen..until a salty-conductive insect goes between them! “Transformers” take in lower voltages and multiply them with magnetic coils to create much higher voltages, anyway I needed a 110volts(house electricity) to 1,000volts. Any thing above one thousand volts would just create multiple omnipresent arcs regardless of the presents of a bug. A month or so later I was walking past a phone utility truck next to a phone pole and piles of wires. I saw what I I’ve been looking for and It looks like no one is using it!…. Although it reads, EXTREMEMLY DANGEROUS INPUT 110VAC – OUTPUT 10Kvac” I decide in my infinite wisdom that this could work. “What is 10kVAC??” . Again I thought “What could possibly go wrong?” while I wrapped the two cylinders of “hardware cloth” or “chicken wire” concentrically, centered a light bulb in the center and wired it to the heavy public utility transformer. After being told not to do ‘anything dangerous’, I waited until after dinner to try the zapper out. My Mom and Dad were in the living room with dinner guest when I mounted the sorry looking cage on the patio rain gutter. I soon found out the “10k” means 10 thousand… that’s right - ten THOUSAND volts instead of the required one thousand! I put on a kitchen oven mitt, plugged the extemtion cord in and jumped back. Instead of little ticks of purple zaps, my bug zapper through a giant purple arc two and half feet to the main wall of the house, carving a big black gouge in the siding. While the arc snaked up and down the wall with an ear peircing crackle, I managed to unplug the transformer with my foot. Shaken and surrounded but a smoky cloud, I heard my Dad pop out of the slidding glass door..” What’s happening!”.. “Ummm….nothing..”