"The Gray Ghost or Feudin' with a Rocky Mountain Pack Rat"

Hi all, Since I took a pretty hard fall yesterday and it hurts to type, for June we will have a time out with one of Dad's cute stories. He put this one out over installments but you get it all today. Have a ton of fun reading and share it with your kids. Enjoy!

Rose

NOTE: the basic story is TRUE All the incidents happened, the school house the scissors, hen house, piano, the range, the apricots, my experience trapping  Rat, and the tail skin left in my hand. The old guru is true too,  but his nose had not been bitten off in a fight. That happened to another of the strange characters I knew. But it sounds good doesn’t it? ~ The Author Richard M. Pratt 

The Gray Ghost

or Feudin’ with a Rocky Mountain Pack Rat 1917 ~ 1950

by Richard M. Pratt January 2004

              In the spring of 1917,  just past my 5th birthday, my family, consisting of my dad Benjamin, mother Lilly, myself, and sisters Melba, age 3 and Naida Lee age 1, moved from Baker City, Oregon to the Colockum Creek, about 20 miles down stream from the town of Wenatchee, Washington. About five miles below our home, the Colockum creek emptied into the mighty Columbia River, about 200 miles up stream from Portland, Oregon. If you are not already lost, you have followed me into the foothills of the Wenatchee mountains, a part of the Cascade range of the mighty Rocky Mountains and the home of the “Rocky Mountain Packrat.” 

Little did I know then that the next 33 years of my life would be in some what constant conflict with this wily creature. If Satan has animal helpers, this rat would surely head the list. However he is a handsome devil, but is seldom seen, for nocturnal by nature he sleeps in the daytime and prowls at night. The occasional glimpse is a greyish streak, hence, “the Gray Ghost.” He is about the size of a playful kitten or gray squirrel, with a nose full of long whiskers and two beady black eyes that seem to see to the very center of ones soul and a long bushy tail that he carries aloft, like a flag pole as he flees from danger. His fur is soft and delicate, a light gray on the back shading to almost white on the underbelly. Pioneers prized the furs for mittens and gloves. 

Now there is nothing wrong with these beautiful creatures, except, like Satan, they seem to get their “kicks” out of tormenting man. Build your house or cabin in their vicinity and viola! One moves in. Only one, but that is two too many.

But first a description of the houses of that day. There was no insulation, no cars, hence no garage, hence no storage for all the junk one will never use. Unfortunately this was solved by an unfinished attic arrived at by a ladder or  creaky, shaky stairs. The attic, of course, was virtually inaccessible except for tunnels thru the maze of “could-have-beens.” The house resembled a big bass drum and any noise in the attic reverberated throughout.

The new boarder would first announce his presence about mid-night, when suddenly right over head, you would hear a mighty BOOM ~ BOOM ~BOOM-BOOM~ BOOM etc. The cadence would be repeated over and over, with no hesitation, or no coffee break.  Just boom ~ boom ~ boom  boom ~ boom! etc.

Whatever that tiny creature used to make such a thunder, we never could find out. For by

the time we had lit the coal oil lantern and struggled up the stairs, we would just catch a glimpse of grey as he moved his operation. A half hour later as we were finally dropping off to sleep, BOOM etc.

But worse, he isn’t called “packrat” for nothing. Somewhere in that attic chaos Rat would build a nest to which he carried anything that took his fancy. He especially liked shiny metal and tin pans. Soon we wondered where our silver ware had gone, as well as pliers, screwdrivers and tin pans. Could this plunder be what he makes the BOOM~BOOM with?

The Colockum Creek was a sparsely settled farming community with about a dozen families scattered up and down its 12 ~ 15 mile length. Very few farmers could see their neighbors homes. The school house, with one room, for all eight grades, and only one teacher was situated about mid way in the valley. The furthest kids walked or rode horseback five or six miles. The upper ranch, where we lived was about two miles by road, but a trail over a high hill shortened our walk to school considerable.

Our first home was the old schoolhouse, which was about 200 feet south of the new school house with a barb wire fence between. The old school house consisted of one small room. The original school had two small lean-tos on the East and South, which served as a bedroom and kitchen. Our culinary water was carried from the creek, some 100 feet beyond the kitchen. Looking up and down the valley each way for a mile, no other buildings were in sight. Although the Tom Goodwin home was up creek, about ½ mile but hidden by trees and brush.

There was no attic in the old school house so we didn’t get the drum serenade. First things first started disappearing. Soon we didn’t have enough spoons to eat our mush with. Which was ok by me. But when mother’s scissors couldn’t be found she really got upset. She knew it wasn’t the baby, and Melba, only 3, was soon scratched off the list of suspects. Which left only five year old, me. My poor distracted mother did about everything to me, but stretch me over a bed of hot coals to confess but I was more bewildered than she. So the next cowboy riding to the far city was commissioned to bring Mother a new pair of scissors. Mother kept them hidden from us kids, but within a week they too were gone. Soon a third pair disappeared. It was about this time that my brother, Leroy, was born in that old school house. I never was sure if there was a connection.

Then it was that Dad caught on, having had previous experience with Rat. Said Dad, “We’ve got us a packrat hereabouts.”  After much searching Rat’s nest was found in the woodshed, with all the missing cutlery, three pairs of scissors and other things that we hadn’t even missed.

Finding the scissors, however, was a doubtful boon. For there were so many scissors lying around that Mother sat down on a pair, severely stabing herself in the only place one can be stabbed, when they sit down on a sharp point! However, I never knew the extent of the wound, for if words had been invented by then for private parts of the body, they were not spoken aloud. Sufficient to say, Mother sat down very carefully for the next while.

THE GRAY GHOST part 2.....in the last episode we left off with my mother sitting down very carefully for awhile. Could it have been those sissors. What would the Gray Ghost do next?

Now the reason Dad suspected Rat was when they first moved to Baker City, Oregon, two years earlier. His first job was as a “line rider” for a large cattle ranch near John Day, Oregon.

Before barb wire fences a rancher kept his cattle somewhat confined to a large area by “line riders.” About every 10 miles, a one room rough cabin was built and manned by two cowboys. Each day they would patrol the line between their cabins and turn back any stray cattle. It was a lonely and boring job at the best.

The cabin was furnished with, a wood burning stove, two chairs and a table, one double bed across the room from the stove, and their few cooking pans, which hung on the wall by the stove.

Dad’s partner was “on the run” from the law, for killing a man in a gun fight. He always slept with his revolver in his hand, he and Dad in the same bed. He warned Dad to never get up in the night without first being sure that Dad had thoroughly awakened him.

Dad was startled awake one night by a cacophony of sounds from the stove area. It sounded like all the pans and pots were swinging and banging each other. Then there was the roar, roar, roar of his companions old 44, until he had fired all six shots in the direction of the noise.

The lighted lantern revealed not a single pan left without a hole in it and several holes in the stove, but Rat was gone. Did he follow Dad to the Colockum? Dad quit the line riding, not having any pans left to cook their food in. There may have been other reason as well.

The fall of 1918, I crossed through the barb wire fence to start my learnin’ process in the new school house. I was the only kid on the Colockum turning six that year and the only one in first grade, and so it was through all 7 years of my readin’, writin’, and such. I finished the 8 grades in 7 years, as Mrs. Heath put me through grades four and five the same year.Incidentally I was always at the head of my class.

But before I passed through that fence, my beloved mother continually harangued me that I must not fight, and that no matter what, I must not hit another kid. The Colockum folks was known as a tough bunch. Every male of every age was a scrapper.

I no sooner got through the fence and stood up, than a bigger kid, remember I’m the only first grader so he was at least a second grader, gave me a wallop to the face and knocked me flat. Each time I got up he would flatten me again. Wanting to mind my mother, I made no defensive gestures. Before long, I was looking like a yo-yo.

Then I heard a high shrieking, falsetto voice. It sounded somewhat like my Mother’s but never had I heard her so agitated. She was screeching, “Richard, you get home here this instant!” 

What a welcome sound! Jumping to my feet and ducking that bully’s next swing, I literally dove back through that fence and to safety, I thought, Only to discover that I was out of the fryin’ pan, but still in the fire. My dear Mother grabbed me by the shoulders, and shook me so violently that even my ears were flopping. Still in that high quivering falsetto, commanded me to go back thru that fence. Her exact words, “lick that little devil”or I’ll come throught and lick both of you.”

I was dammed if I did and double dammed if I didn’t. I don’t remember if Mama tossed me over the fence or if I dove through to escape her ire. But there I was, back in the ring, with my fearsome opponent aiming a haymaker for my face. Still in a half-crouched position, I straightened up suddenly, with my head in his belly. The fight was over as he rolled on the ground trying to get back the air that had left him in a mighty whoosh.

Now we were both in trouble, as the school marm was a screamin’ from the porch of the new school house to get inside pronto or be whipped for being late. We had discipline in those days and I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.

Roy Smith became my first school friend. Roy had a bad hair lip, which couldn’t be fixed in those days of primitive surgery. It was almost impossible to understand him, except when he got mad, which was often, when he would revert to plain old Colockum Creek cussin! He could say all those dirty words just as plain as could be.

Well, I could write a book about those years of book learnin.’ Maybe I will someday, but now to Rat!

After we found mother’s scissors, Rat seemed to give up for awhile Shortly thereafter we moved to the Upper Ranch, a couple of miles away. Then strange things began to happen in the chicken house. The chickens suddenly stopped layin’ eggs.Their feed, a mixture of ground gains such as wheat and corn suddenly began to disappear at an alarming rate. Then someone discovered Rat, running from nest to nest gobbling up eggs and to the chicken feeder, gorging on the mash, as it was called. I’m was 9 or 10 years old, nearly a full grown man, and so I received  the assignment to rid Rat from the race.

I was already responsible to destroy gophers, groundhogs, and badgers on the ranch for their destruction of crops. To do so, Dad had equipped me with a dozen Victor-O, single spring traps, a smaller version of the traps the mountain men used to trap coyotes, beaver and such. At this writing I still have some of those 80 year old traps. Ask to see them.

My nearly mature brain came up with a simple solution. Put what eggs I could find in a chicken nest, set a Victor-O trap on top of them, get up before the chickens and Rat was doomed.

Sadly I over slept. When I got to the hen house, the eggs were gone, the trap was sprung but Rat was no where to be seen, and one of out best hens had her leg in the trap. With a broken, leg, she would never lay another egg so at least we had chicken and dumplings for dinner.

“Ok,” I vowed, if Rat wants to fight dirty, “I can too.” So putting fresh straw, about 6 inches deep in a nest box, setting my trap on the straw and completely hiding it under chicken feathers then covering the nest so only Rat could slither in, I went to bed, dreaming of success at last.

Next morning, gloating my way to the chicken coop, I lifted off the lid. No Rat! In mockery, he had formed a nice nest in the straw, under the trap, then he had pulled all the feathers down from the trap, to line his nest. The trap acted as a roof to the nest. How did he ever do that and not set off the hair trigger, that controlled the trap? At this point I admitted defeat but vowed that I would resume the duel at the next opportunity. Actually it turned out to be many years later. Whether it was  Rat, or a great grandson makes, no difference. Again he appeared on the scene and we resumed the war.

GRAY GHOST part 3

      Now married to the girl of my dreams and with four kids, we bought a beautiful 420 acre farm in the very tops of the Cascade mountains, about five miles above the little town of Cashmere, Washington, and about 50 miles from our old Colockum arena.

Shortly after moving Rat attacked again. Of course it was the middle of the night. We were sound asleep in our upstairs bedroom, when we were startled awake by someone playing the piano downstairs, in the living room. 

It was a wild tune, not one that I could quite recognize. It sounded somewhat like a medly of Beethoven, Mozart and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, with lots of high notes and then a rapid run, clear down to the deepest tones.

My wife suggested I go investigate, and invite whoever was playing to come back in the daytime. I retorted that it was the best music I had heard, since the Colockum Creek days, when old Grandpa Ingersoll would fiddle- up a storm for us to dance by, but only when he was inebbriated with his own moonshine. The more moonshine, the better the music. Why one night, he wore all the strings from his bow, but being too drunk to notice, he just rozened up the stick and kept right on playing. It sounded about the same.

My wife finally got up. I thought I heard her mutter something like, “What a coward I married.”  She stumbled downstairs. Then there was no doubting what she said as she screamed, “Richard, you get down here this instant.” 

I was thinking, “she’s being attacked by a bear or something worse.” I charged down the stairs to do battle. And what do you know. There was old Rat a bouncin’ up and down, and running from one end of the keyboard to the other. He didn’t even pay us any mind. While we were looking for a broom or some other weapon, he finished the tune and disappeared.

A few nights later, about 4 a.m. my wife was in the living room nursing the baby, Rose Marie, and looking right at the piano, when it began the same tune. She could see the keys going up and down, but no one in sight. Yes, I had long since been speaking of Rat as a person!

Then Rat suddenly came out of the piano and on to the keyboard. Again the tune was wild and exuberant.

From time to time Adaline would clap her hands and stomp her feet. Then Rat would go into a wild and frenzied encore. They kept this up for a good half hour, until I came downstairs to go to work. Seeing me, Rat gave a defiant flip of that big bushy tail and faded from view.

To understand the next episode, I must try and describe the big black, iron and tin stove, called a range, that dominated the kitchen. Black and shiny, Mama polished it occasionally with shoe polish. Everything in the kitchen centered on it. There were few or no cabinets. But then we didn’t have much to store anyway.

The top of the stove was about 3 feet deep and 5 feet wide. On the left was the firebox, in which the wood burned. A door swung down in front to receive the fuel. Directly below this, was another door that allowed one to pull out the ash bin, when full. The ashes seemed to always be in need of dumping. To the right of the firebox and under the top, was the oven. Draft openings in various places, would direct the heat around the oven, when baking. Four round holes, about 10 inches in diameter, were in the top, covered by metal lids that could be lifted off to inspect the flames, clean out soot, or set a pan directly over the flame to heat faster. On the extreme right was the reservoir, which held three or four pails of water. I’d swear it was more like thirty or forty pails and always empty. The water never got really hot but it was better than ice water to wash in. The back of the stove raised up about three feet and was capped by two warming ovens, each capable of holding a couple of pies or whatever one wanted to keep warm. Their heat was supplied by the chimney as it passed through their middle.

When a cake was baking, everyone was cautioned to not jiggle the bouncy kitchen floor or the cake would fall. Instead of a nice oval, round topped cake, it would be reversed with a one inch deep hole from rim to center. My Grandma would restore the beauty of the cake by filling the center and rounding it off with chocolate frosting, up to an inch deep. If Grandma left the kitchen for a minute the cake always fell. She could never figure out why. I never told her. But oh, how I loved those fallen chocolate filled goodies.

Again in the middle of the night we were awakened by Boom ~ Boom from the kitchen. In our night clothes only, we hurried down to find that someone had left a couple of the lids off the stove. There was old Rat, sitting on top of the oven, with just his little beady eyed head protruding out of the hole. He had found the perfect drum. We hurried and closed all openings. We could hear him running around (not in) the oven and through the fire box and ash pit.

At long last we had old Rat. I got kindling and prepared to light the fire. I had won! Victory was sweet! But before I could light the match, Adaline said emphatically, “NO!” She told me it was downright inhumane to burn Rat at the stake. No one had suffered that fate since the Salem witch trials in the 1600s.

Besides that she reasoned, the smell of burnt Rat flesh would stink up the house, for no telling how long. We might even have to build a new house. With that thought, she appeared ready to change her mind. But before I could ignite the fire, Old Rat managed to push off a lid and excape again.

Escape to what? We soon found out! Spring was in the air, birds singing, and rats multiplying. Again stoves and the rest of our heating system must be explained. Opposite the range in the living room, was the big round, pop bellied, old heating stove, about the size of a 50 gallon, steel drum. In fact, a steel drum was easily converted into a stove. One could drop in two or three big chunks of wood, open the drafts and ice would still freeze in the far corners of the house. As soon as spring came, the stove would be taken down and stored on the back porch. So it was that spring. Soon we were too busy with plowing and planting to even think about Rat and he was probably off a courting anyway.

 The first crop to ripen, in late June, was apricots. Oh, how the whole family liked them, raw, canned, or dried. Having plenty, we ate what we could, canned what we could and what we couldn’t, we dried. But drying was risky. We knew Rat was still around. So I built a large wooden drying frame, four feet wide by sixteen feet long, with a screen bottom, on which to place the pitted and halved cots. I then suspended it from the back porch roof with four wires. The rack was up about four feet from the floor and about the same distance down from the roof, with only those four wires connecting. Surely it was Rat proofed. But it wasn’t. The next morning there was an area about the size of a double newspaper sheet totally void of cots. By the end of the week there was not even a smidgen of a cot left. And search tho we did, the whole family, under the porch, the house and surrounding area, there was not a trace of a single apricot.

GRAY GHOST part 4 Remember all those dry apricots? We searched and searched for them, read on......

     By the time we gave up the search, fall had arrived and we must ready for winter. I grabbed the old heater stove by it’s top, to carry it into the living room, and couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t even budge it. I gave a second mighty heave. Off came the top, exposing a  heating stove full of yuck, rotten, mildewy soot blackened ‘cots. What a mess.

That’s when mama issued the ultimatum. It was her or Rat. My choice. Get rid of Rat or she goes home to her mama, taking the kids too. (Cute little rascals got their looks from their mama.) Being a loving husband and a family loving man, the decision was easy to make. But after tryng near 40 years to catch Rat, I asked, “How?”

The answer, go talk to “the old man on the mountain.” No one knew much about him save he lived on top of a mountain and knew all the answers. Very few knew his name but I did. It was Burns Yocum. He was mean, cantankerous and anti- social. There was a road into his place from the back side, but I elected to climb up our side. Today such men are called gurus and are much sought after.

I started before daylight. About noon I reached the top, right in front of his cabin. One of the reasons he lived alone was that he had no nose. It had been bitten off earlier in life, in some drunken cowboy fight. He looked awful. It was always draining into his mouth. When he sneezed, one wanted to duck rapidly, as the effect was somewhat the same as putting a diffuser on the end of a high pressure water hose.

He was seated crossleged in front of his shack, with his eyes closed, on a beautiful fall day. I gave a good loud, “Hello”, whereupon, he muttered something that sounded like, “Get lost”. But too much was at stake. I just suddenly let loose and told him the whole sordid story, that you have just been reading right up to this very word.

He asked, when I finally stopped, what I wanted him to do about it.

Said I, “How do I get rid of Rat, once and for all?”

He solemnly replied, “Be smarter than  Rat.”

With that he went back to sleep. I turned and stumbled back down the mountain, mumblin’ and grumblin’, “How can I be smarter than a 40 year old Rat?” Nearly home, I sat down on a rock to rest, when the light went on. Do like Satan! “Trap him, through the things he likes. That’s how sin got started in the first place. Cain wanted his brother’s sheep, without paying for them and the Devil suggested mayhem. Wow, I had it! So I sat there and ran through my mind, Rat’s likes. He obviously liked eggs but he kept us fresh out. Then chicken mash, oh he loved that, and shiny tin pans of all sizes. Eureka, I had it! 

Rushing home, I got my mother’s old dish washing pan, a Victor-O trap with its hair trigger some mash, and bounded up the stairs to the attic, sidled down the narrow isle of junk to a dead end. Placing the pan on the floor, I carefully set the trap, placed it in the bottom of the pan, and carefully, so very carefully so as not to set the trap off, totally covered it with mash. For the first time in years I began to dream of victory. Sure enough we had barely gotten tosleep, when such a clatter erupted above us, that it sounded like Santa’s 8 tiny deer.

With lighted lantern I was soon at the finale of the 40 year old feud. I had him! There Rat was. His left front leg held securely in the jaws of my trap. I chortled with glee and stared planning his demise. I could rip him apart with my bare hands, drop him in boiling oil or throw him to the dogs to be torn to pieces. 

Then I made the mistake of looking into his tiny black eyes. They were so pitiful,  as if he could talk, I could hear him say, “Ok, you win. It’s been a great 40 years. Turn me loose. We’ll call it a draw and you’ll never see me again.”

I hesitated, Then he seemed to say, “Besides you’re to chicken to carry out my death.  Now come on turn me loose and we part forever.”

He won! That blankety Rat had won. He was right. I couldn’t kill him.

Taking his beautiful bushy tail in my right hand, I gently removed the trap, intending to carry him down to the front door and freedom. 

But when I went to lift him up, his tail just came all unglued. It parted from the rest of him, right where his tail emerged from his rump. He scampered off,  waiving his bloody stump in victory. I still had the skin and fur of his tail in my right hand. But he was a Rat of his word, for thus ended the feud. Of course, soon afterthat, we moved to town which Rocky Mountain Rats are sane enough to avoid.

By the way, next time you visit, ask to see the old tin dish pan and the Victor-O trap. I still have them.

Oh yes, I did meet his cousins out in the islands, but they are ugly and no fun. Before my wife came to bed and shut off the lights, I would watch old warf rats run up and down on the underside of our thatched roof over our bed. But that is another story.