Tally Ho! or, The Refrigerator Door

It was big, old, and yellow; a king-sized “fixer-upper.” The two-story farmhouse also came with a half-acre lot, a partially demolished commercial-sized chicken shed, and three ancient willow trees so immense they were local landmarks. The property formed a miniature valley, sloping sharply down from the boulevard, then leveling into a parking and garden area, before dropping the final eight feet to a stream bed. On the flat stretch opposite the garden, the house was built. 1

The house fronted the street with an oddly surprised look on its weathered face. Its tall lemony expanse was interrupted by a brown doorway in the middle of the first story, flanked by small, square, cheek-patch windows. The tall, rectangular second story windows stared in symmetrical stupefaction over the drop-jawed entrance and across a wide weather-beaten wooden bridge, which traversed the stream directly in front of the door.2

A seven foot wide cement patio ran past the long side of the old chicken coop, and ended short of the back door of the house. Originally designed to allow service vehicles to reach the large chicken shed, its length of over forty feet made for great bike riding and roller skating.3

Dad and we three oldest kids cleaned the still-standing end of the coop (which was nearest the house), and removed old wire nesting baskets. I don’t know what the scientific half-life of chicken manure is, but the building still seemed half-alive with it! Tiny dusty, grey feathers filled the air with every sweep of the broom, and we quickly learned to keep our mouths closed, and only speak out in the open. It was filthy work, and the six dirty rows of small, rectangular window panes, shaded by one of the willows, let in little light. The single dim overhead light bulb seemed only to whimper against the gloom. It was shovel, broom, crowbar and hammer work, not a gentle tidying up. Mother never let us bring the broom we used back into the house. 4

The north end of this shed was largely a skeletal remain which the boys and Dad removed, salvaging the reusable components. The best of these materials were used in constructing a ‘new’ north wall. The amputated front section of the coop became Dad’s workshop and tool shed. Fortunately, there was live electrical wiring in this end of the coop. It was good for feebly lighting chicken ghosts, powering Dad’s electric table saw, and eventually running a large chest freezer. 5

The huge trees drew a wide assortment of wild birds. We enjoyed their colors and songs, and in keeping with long-established family tradition, we fed them. They enjoyed chicken scratch (millet, wheat or barley, cracked corn and other small grains) and the seeds from the tall sunflower plants we grew along the sidewalk, where they doubled as a privacy fence. Our edible offerings were scattered daily on the large cement pad in front of the shed. An old pot with water played birdbath. 6

The large property upstream of the chicken coop was undeveloped. Its voluntary population of weeds, grasses and gnarly trees extended along the meandering stream until it reached its far property line, where a tall fence had been erected atop a rise of several feet. It was along this rise that an immense bank of wild blackberry vines arched like a lush green wave. The berries were huge and sweet. The thorns were huge and mean. In spite of the inevitable blood price, we kids picked berries at least a couple times each summer. Mom made the most incredible blackberry cobbler! She had found there was no point in making pies, as the huge volume of juice always resulted in a soggy bottom crust. Instead, she ladled fabulous slosh, topped with her crispy, golden sugared lattice into eagerly proffered bowls. 7

The old house was unique in several ways. It was constructed before most building codes were established. We learned a lot as we rebuilt it over the years. It had no insulation between the inside and outside walls. Not a big deal on the temperate California coast, but a surprise, nonetheless. At some point in the past, someone had gotten tired of walking outside to reset tripped electric breakers, and had bypassed them in the circuit box. We learned this when we took down the living room ceiling, and found substantial black scorch marks in each of the large support beams of the house, where the electric wiring passed through. Dad said it was a miracle we hadn’t been burned to death in our sleep. The water heater was not inside the house, but on a little cement pad outside, with a single-seater outhouse-sized box built around it. This had been covered over with the same broad yellow shingles as the house.8

The old house was long-time home to more than one species. As the oldest child, I was given the single bedroom downstairs. I hardly slept the first few weeks, rigid in terror as I heard scratching in the wall next to my bed. A childhood viewing of The Fall of the House of Usher and The Premature Burial at an all-night Edgar Allen Poe movie extravaganza had left me particularly petrified by scratching noises. It became my nightly nightmare. My parents suggested the likely source was an industrious mouse. Books had always been my friends, and at this time I made happy discovery of “A Little Princess” by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Reading how Sarah made friends with her attic rat and his family awoke a hope of peaceful cohabitation. I named my night visitor Bilbo, and would hold conversations with him in my mind. I gradually developed a friendly inclination toward him, and was usually able to sleep.9

Eventually, the wild acreage upstream of ours was purchased. It was stripped to the ground, bulldozed into smoother inclines, and two new homes built on the most elevated areas of the lots, nearest the boulevard. A concrete sluiceway was installed to speed the stream and drainage rainwater from the 45-inch pipe at the far end of their property onto ours. Entirely overlooked was the fact that our property ended in two twelve-inch pipes, barely sufficient in rainy season to move the previously meandering stream’s volume under the paved road that ran along our south line. 10

The developer’s changes abruptly altered the local ecology. Critters that had previously dwelt upstream, unmolested, evacuated en masse to the nearest natural habitat…ours. You could say they fled like rats. In fact, a lot of the refugees WERE rats. They prefer nearby waterways for nesting and breeding. The field mice and rats discovered the bird feeding station, and happily helped themselves. It got to where you couldn’t go to the workshop freezer for a loaf of bread without disturbing scurrying things. We were overwhelmed with unwanted vermin. The normally nocturnal rats became so aggressive that they would come out in broad daylight for the bird food, scaring off the birds. When Dad went out to shoo them off, they wouldn’t go. They held their ground and snarled. That was it. War was officially declared between the housefolk and the rodents.11

We purchased a lot of traps. The rat traps looked like king-sized mouse traps. Each had a metal bar mounted on a heavy spring, attached to a wooden rectangle. They were released by a sensitive catch when the bait attached to it was wiggled. The bar made a nearly instantaneous transition from one end of the wood board to the other, breaking the neck of the nibbler in the process. At least, that was the idea…except our large black rats would finish eating the bait, and then shake the sprung trap off their thick necks and waddle away. Dad finally hit on the idea of driving a few nails through the bottom of their trap boards, and we finally killed a few that way. But the most effective rat terminator was Dad, himself. He was a marksman, as both his military parents had been. He took to keeping his .22 rifle handy as he worked on remodeling a bedroom that had a window facing the workshop. Rats venturing out for birdseed were shot. He rarely missed. It was high summer adventure for us kids. We felt there should be some sort of recognition for such accomplishments. We started keeping a tally. Then someone found some marbled gray contact paper, a thin vinyl sheet with self-adhesive backing. It was perfect. 12

My artistic sister cut out little mouse and big rat silhouettes. As the day’s “count” came in, new shadow shapes were mounted on the very old refrigerator door. About this time, Dad hired a former student to help with some of the remodeling. John came to the kitchen for a glass of water during a break, and asked about the long columns on the refrigerator door. When we explained, he protested vigorously that we were making it all up. Just then, one of the younger children threw open the back door and hollered, “We got another one!” We all ran out to see. Sure enough, another mouse. While we were still standing over the small gray corpse, two more snaps were heard in quick succession, and the little kids were off like bloodhounds to investigate the most recently sprung traps. New silhouettes joined the ranks, and John left the kitchen, shaking his head. He didn’t say another word to us for the rest of the day, though he opened and then shut his mouth a few times. It was as if his brain was balking at every attempt to grasp our very strange reality. After all, we lived along a middle class residential boulevard, half a block from the elementary school and two blocks from the big new high school in the early 1970’s. I suppose stranger things have happened in Santa Cruz, California, but perhaps only under the influence of hallucinogenics! 13