Here is a little story about some inhabitants of a mine. The
first is about an invisible man called Tommie Knocker. The other
concerns rats. There has been many stories written about Tommie
Knockers. Most of the stories try to tell you that he is the guy
that makes all of the trouble. . .and is, therefore, a very bad
guy; that is, he is the cause of ground caving, or timbers
more often referred to as the Little Man is a good guy that tries
to give you a warning that something is about to happen that is
dangerous. If a piece of ground begins to move, or to cave, most
always a few pebbles begin to drop first, then possibly followed by
a few larger ones. A miner will listen after the first pebbles
drop, and if they continue, or if a timber cracks, he will say the
Little Man is trying to tell us something we had better take a
look. If it looks bad accompanied by more noise, the miner will
say, ‘the Little Man says, ‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘. He is the little invisible guy that gives a warning, and has
saved many a miner’s life. One story that I read said that
miners left scraps of food for him, and that these morsels would
disappear. This is where the story-teller confused his story with
the presence of rats.
Now, about the rats. Most all dry mines have rats, even down to
the lowest levels. Now nobody loves a rat, and I do not think the
miners do either, but miners will never kill a rat underground.
Mine rats live off feed for the mules, and on the scraps the men
feed them. Rats also carry acorns, nuts, and the like from the
surface down hundreds of feet underground. At a place where several
men eat their lunches, several rats, as many as one dozen will show
up for a hand out. They become quite tame, but you seldom see them
during work hours. But they know the time for lunch to the minute.
They will be around you’ feet, and will stand on their hind
feet to take an offering like a squirrel. Now the reason that a
miner will not kill or harm a rat is that it will give you a
warning just as will the Tommie Knocker. The rat is much quicker to
note a ground disturbance than the Little Man is. The rat possibly
feels rather than hears it. When a miner sees rats moving out of an
area, he loses no time in getting out himself.
I have witnessed two occasions when the rats gave us miners
warning. Once, as I was tramming car on the 30 level in the North
Star at Grass Valley, an old man who was sweeping up the foot-wall
close to the level called back to me, and said, ‘Do you notice
some rats running back and forth, and seem to be getting a little
uneasy?’ I stopped to watch, and saw a few rats running back
and forth. If two met, they would stand up on their hind legs, put
their noses together, and do a lot of squeaking and fussing; then
one would go one way, and the other, the other way. While we were
watching them come in more numbers, the Stop Boss came along. I
said. ‘Ed, something is wrong with the rats.’ He stopped to
watch them for a few minutes. Then along came a mother rat dragging
all of her young ones hanging on by their dinners, as that is the
usual way they are transported. She headed for the Station. In a
couple of minutes along came another mother with her family hanging
likewise. She was in a terrible hurry. The Boss says, ‘Quickly
get those two miners out up above you there, and make it fast! Drop
everything and everybody go to the Station. I will get the men out
of the next stope.’ I ran, and shut off the air the men were
drilling with, and then yelled to them that the Boss said to drop
everything and to get to the Station as fast as possible. We all
gathered there, and soon we were assigned to work at another place
at a lower level.
About two weeks later the Boss gathered us at the surface before
going down, and said, ‘You men can go back to 30 level No. 4
again this morning as the rats are back.’
This is what had happened. There had been another vein about 100
feet underneath us that was worked out, and the place had been
filled with waste rock. The area where we had been working, about
200 feet square, had settled some six inches. This caused all of
the timber in our stop to fall out, together with the machines the
miners were using. Timbermen had been working for several days
replacing timber before we were sent back. No cave had occurred,
but we could roll rocks down through the crack left.
I have said that a miner would not kill a rat, But I saw miners
kill a rat on one occasion. Mine rats are not large usually, and
are shiny black. They are mostly called a wharf rat. This one time
a much larger than usual rat showed at dinner. It was a hog, and
would not let the others feed until it got its fill. It would bite
the others, and had them all squealing, afraid to come in. After
about the third day one ole miner said, ‘I think that we should
do away with him.’ Getting a nod of approval from a couple of
men, he picked up a shovel, and hit it a pat on the back; then
threw the carcass into the garbage can.
On another occasion, just at quitting time on a Saturday night,
we saw the rats taking out of our working stop. We reported it, but
it was all quiet there on Monday morning; yet, about ten tons of
rock had caved out of the side, and had buried our track.
At the Champion Mine in Nevada City one day at lunch time, a rat
came into feed. It had a very badly mangled and mashed hind leg.
This mine had an incline shaft, and the rats often ran up the shaft
rails from one level to the other ahead of the skip. Some times
they got caught. As the rat was dragging its injured leg about, one
miner took off his jacket, and caught it. He laid the bad leg out
on a block of wood while another miner took the ax and chopped off
the bad leg. The rat scampered away. We did not see it for several
days; then one day it showed up with the amputation healing well.
It ate with the other rats, getting around fine on three legs. It
stayed around at dinner time as long as I worked on that level.