A cockfight is brewing near Spirit Lake between two neighbors: One has a rooster, the other has an air raid siren.
William Steven Prickett, 43, of Spirit Lake, is fed up with the rooster waking him and his pregnant wife at 3 a.m. every day.
"I am not bothering anybody out here. But I'm sick and tired of being bothered," Prickett said Tuesday. "I don't care what this guy does in his house but I don't want to hear his rooster crowing through my house at 3 o'clock in the morning."
Prickett purchased an air raid siren to retaliate. Now, when Gerald Wright's rooster crows, the siren blows. Sometimes, it wails for more than 15 minutes. That has the whole neighborhood's feathers ruffled.
Holiday Ranch Estates are rural residential five-acre tracts, Prickett said, not agricultural plots.
"I didn't know I was going to be living next to some Okie farmer."
But Wright, who owns 11 chickens, is most aggravated by Prickett's manner.
"If he had been man enough to come to my house and say 'Your rooster is bothering me. It wakes me up every morning, can we do something about it?' I would have probably told him 'Yea, let's butcher him. Bring your wife over and we'll barbecue him and enjoy him."'
According to law enforcement, Prickett is no Mr. Rogers. Police records show he's called police about neighbors more than 50 times and the law's been called on him more than 30 times at his three most recent addresses. More than 10 Spirit Lake residents have reported Prickett to police for disturbing the peace over the recent siren incidents. The prosecutor is also considering charges for Prickett's harassing phone calls to Wright.
"You've got two options: Shut that bird up or get sued. Period," was one message Wright recorded.
Prickett claims that when he bought the $100,000 Holiday Ranch Estates property, his contract included a covenant prohibiting "anything which may be or become an annoyance or a nuisance to the neighborhood."
It also prohibits conducting sale, trade or business in private dwellings in the neighborhood. Wright, Prickett claims, is raising chickens and selling their eggs.
Tuesday, he contacted the health district, the Better Business Bureau and tax officials about the alleged egg sales.
"One way or another I'm going to shut him down," Prickett said.
In the meantime, the rooster crows, Prickett blows and nobody gets any sleep.
What's bothersome, say Kootenai County Sheriff's Department officials, is Prickett's history of feuding with neighbors.
Records show one neighborhood dispute after another since he moved to the Coeur d'Alene area from Montana in 1992.
Dozens of his former neighbors have complained that Prickett threatened and harassed their families, shot at their pets and vandalized property.
Prickett says he simply wants to exist undisturbed. He denies most allegations, and many weren't prosecuted.
"We have to deal with him day after day," said sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger. "It doesn't matter where he's at. He has these problems wherever he goes, which leads me to believe he's the cause of these problems."
Bonners Ferry resident Kay Burdick said Prickett was so impossible when he lived adjacent to her summer home in Bayview, the family bought his property through a second party to get rid of him.
"He was a horrible person to live next door to," Burdick recalled.
When the Burdicks installed downspouts and rain gutters on their house, Prickett complained he'd be flooded out. He griped about their leaning fence and when they let him take it down, he then complained to planning and zoning about its removal, she told police. Burdick once called authorities, claiming Prickett threatened her son because his lawnmower was throwing rocks at Prickett's trailer.
The situation escalated during a family reunion in 1993 when family members began playing horseshoes at 10 a.m. one Saturday.
"He came out that morning and threatened to kill us all and I think he would have," Burdick said. "The guy is a serious threat to neighbors in my opinion. Maybe they don't realize how serious he is. He's a very intense, unstable person."
Fearing escalation, deputies don't even encourage neighbors to negotiate with Prickett.
"I tell them try to avoid him. Call us," Wolfinger said. "We'd rather we deal with him than some poor neighbor."
Chris Kuhn of Bayview also had repeated run-ins with Prickett. The disputes came to a head when Kuhn accused Prickett of setting off a black rifle powder bomb beneath his car. Despite facial burns and bomb-making literature found in Prickett's home, a jury acquitted Prickett of all charges.
He spent five months in jail before being found not guilty, Prickett said.
"What am I guilty of? Trying to live. I'm just one man trying to live where I bought a piece of land."
