Needed: Pied Piper for Amtrak

My wife and I had traveled out to the Seattle area, on Amtrak, to spend a few days babysitting our grandkids while our daughter and son-in-law made a brief pre-Christmas trip. We opted to take Amtrak because of the various weather threats, and we’re not big fans of crossing mountains with snow-packed roads. Turned out to be the right decision as both the Cascades and Rockies were hammered with snow both going and coming to and from the west coast.

We’ve traveled Amtrak many times, first when we lived in North Dakota and would travel to see our family in Washington, and later from Montana - from both Libby and Chinook. We always say, “Amtrak is not for people in a hurry.”

We’ve had some interesting adventures when the trains were held up by mudslides or avalanches and a large part of the trip, either way, was by specially chartered buses that Amtrak would arrange at the last minute. Once, after being sent to Portland rather than to Seattle from Spokane, the whole train load of passengers was flown from Portland to Seattle. The unexpected is actually an expectation when traveling by Amtrak in the winter.

Where’s the Pied Piper when you need him?

On the last leg of our recent trip, heading back east, we encountered yet a new adventure. Heading east, Amtrak’s Empire Builder starts out as two trains - one originating at Portland and the other in Seattle. Leaving late afternoon from the west coast they combine in Spokane into one train for the final leg of the trip to Chicago.

The trains combine and leave Spokane about 1:30 a.m. for Chicago. The first stop after Spokane is Sandpoint, Idaho, that stop is also in the wee hours of the morning. Thankfully the conductors and dining car people don’t make public announcements until about 7 a.m. The event that caused a bit of a stir was not really known by passengers until the first announcement was made around breakfast time.

The conductor came on the public address system and stated, “Attention passengers in coach car number 12, a couple detrained in Sandpoint and discovered their pet rat was not in its cage. If you see the rat, please notify an Amtrak employee and we will catch the rat and ‘put it off the train.’” My wife and I were not in car number 12.

Several subsequent announcements were made about the missing rat. Likely this was to alert new passengers, boarding, that there was a bit of a crisis going on. Somewhere around Shelby or Cut Bank, mid-afternoon, the conductor announced that the rat had been found.

I was curious as to what the conductor meant when he had earlier said, “The rat will be put off the train.”

I envisioned some employee grabbing it and tossing out into a snow bank. When I found a conductor and asked about the now captured rat, he said, “Oh he’s in a box in car 10. We’ll deliver him to a veterinarian who will likely put him down.”

All I could think was, “Give him to me, I’ll put him off the train and you can give me the professional fee.”

There are likely protocols that apply when an animal is abandoned on the train, tossing it out a window must not be in the plan.

So, we detrained in Havre, glad to be only three hours late and the snow not totally messing up the road to Chinook. I still wonder about the rat and what ultimately happened to it. Several passengers, when asked, suggested the rat be packaged and sent to the people who let it loose in the first place. Others had more graphic, and violent, suggestions of the best way to handle a rat. Suffice it to say, most suggestions didn’t mention anything about delivering it to a veterinarian.

The upshot of this story is you can always expect the unexpected on Amtrak. Even when the trains run and things seem to be going well, there’s an element of adventure.

I can’t wait to see what happens on our next trip on the Empire Builder.