Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Originally posted: Tue, 13 May 2003

Dear reading buddies,

Hi! I just finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and I loved it. I think this would be a good one for the younger readers in our group. There are a couple of things you might want to be heads up about with a young reader (ask for details if you want them) but it is a delightful read. Much more in the "what I think of as a children's book" category than some of the heavy emotion laden Newbery Medal's I've read so far. One thinks of Wind in the Willows and other such animal stories.

It's about some laboratory Rats who are being given injections to make them more intelligent and to make them live longer. It works a little better than the scientists ever imagined and they eventually escape the lab and make their wise and intelligent way in the world.

For anyone who thinks this story line is silly, whimsical and mere fantasy I share this real life story that happened, sure 'nough to me:

When I was living in Bynum a rat came to live in my house. I was familiar with mice coming in the house, and because mice, in my opinion, do NOT make good house mates, I would live trap them with have-a-hearts and then take them across the river bridge or walk them a good ways down the river trail and let them go. A drafty, leaky old house like my mill house in Bynum is just pretty tough to get completely mouse-proofed. So, for a while I was in denial about this new visitor, but eventually, I HAD to take notice.

It was like living with a poltergeist! Things MOVED from one part of the house to another. LARGE things. Like a bar of soap from the bathroom to the kitchen! Whole sweet potatoes. Whole avocados! BIG things like this (stuff a mouse couldn't possibly budge!) would relocate themselves in the night. The poltergeist also crawled up to the TOP shelf of a large bookshelf I had and rummaged around in some yarn I had, leaving some droppings that were MUCH larger than mouse poop.

Eventually, as I said, I had to come face to face with the fact that I had a RAT living in my house!

At some point soon after denial had lifted I remember calling my friend Wayne Poole to get some advice about this matter. "Yeah," Wayne said in his ultra slow, Durham native, wonderfully southern way, "There's not just ONE rat you know. They don't come one at a time. And it doesn't take them long to make MORE rats, and more rats, and more rats. . . Yeah, they'll swallow your house whole. . ." I was sitting on the couch in the late afternoon and could clearly see the jaw line of a LARGE rodent coming across my windows and then the house went completely dark. . . well OK, I could clearly (much TOO clearly) IMAGINE that.

Yet, I was determined to deal with this threatening intruder in a humane fashion. I wanted to solve the problem with out having to become a bloody murderer.

Wayne recommended that I consult another friend, herbalist Will Endres. Will proceeded to tell me a nightmarish story of a rat invasion he'd dealt with, with a distinctly murderous ending. He also underscored Wayne's gentle reminder that time was of the essence, that a small problem could become a LARGE problem in a very short period of time. Hinting, really, that murder might be required if I wasn't willing to move out and let the rats take the house. And as I was getting quite jittery about this whole matter by now, Will suggested that I take measures for dealing with phobias, he had helped several people with problems along these lines and recommended learning as much about what ever you were phobic of, in my case: Rats.

Attempting to head Will's advice, I went to the library. As it turned out I managed to avoid any factual information about rats available at the Pittsboro public library, and came home instead with a handful of children's stories, picture books, completely fictional, featuring them instead.

That actually helped lighten things up a little.

Looking around I could assess this much. The creature I was dealing with (I still was in denial about the creatureS plural aspect of my problem,) was SMART, STRONG, HARDWORKING and was FOCUSED on it's own GOALS and achieving them. It also was NOT dealing with any confusing moral quandaries where I was involved. It's conscious was completely clear and it was wasting no time wondering.

I on the other hand WAS still wringing my hands concerning it's fate.

Finally what I did was launch a major clean up effort with in the three rooms of my house. NO food was left out, I bought metal lard tins and stowed the yarn in them, all dishes were washed before going to bed, I even hid the soap. I tried to make my dwelling a not very good place to visit for snacks.

I could hear scurrying in the wall near the hot water heater in the kitchen. I figured the warmth from the water heater might make that area especially attractive. In order to keep the area clean and to watch it more carefully I cleared the table-height hot water heater off of all the stuff it had accumulated. . . a box of tiny origami cranes (I was making earrings out of them), some old cassette tapes I was attempting to label and organize, the usual mishmash of various random things. I tried to also figure out any possible access points and blocked them. A friend helped me cut off the old washing machine connections and we installed a piece of tin over the holes (the washing machine had been hauled off long ago). I stuffed steel wool around the water pipes where they came through the floor. (Even though Wayne had told me that rats could chew through METAL pipes to get water.) And I hoped that these efforts were being made with the rat on the OUTSIDE, rather than trapping him or her inside with no way to get out!

Then I bought a largish live trap and borrowed another. The first couple of times the door was tripped, but no one was inside. (Did I mention these animals are smart?) I had to learn to be a real hunter. I placed the trap along a wall. I made a "path" to the trap with bricks. The trap had to be entered straight-on in order to work most effectively.

And then at last, one morning, I went to check my trap line and found a not overly large rat trapped inside one of them. He was frightened. Not in any way scary looking. Almost cute. I covered the cage with a blanket to help him stay calm. Drove to another county (I wasn't taking any chances!) and let the rat free near the Haw River near the old Greensboro highway bridge.

And lo and behold! ALL rat activity in my house ended.

It seems that by some miracle, I really was dealing with RAT singular.

I counted myself lucky, took a deep breath, and eventually, after some time had passed was able to relax enough to return to my previous levels of sloth and lack of vigilance.

If this was the end of the story that would be exciting enough. But it is not. It gets better.

YEARS later the hot water heater spewed water all over the kitchen floor. In investigating this we lifted the lid to the metal box enclosing the water heater. . . and there in the insulation below, we looked down upon a cozy little dwelling. There was a large "nest" of cassette tape un-spooled. And there in the nest were about a dozen tiny paper cranes in an assortment of bright colors. They were in perfect condition. They had not been chewed up in any way. I swear they were there for esthetic reasons. Art? Rats?

The Rats of NIMH?

Love, Louise