Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Mr. Ages lives in the basement of a burned down farmhouse beyond the field Mrs. Frisby lives in. Mrs. Frisby heads to see him at once, fearing not getting back before dark. She takes the long way around the farmhouse and new barn to avoid the cat who lives on the farm, bounding through the frozen leaves and grass without making a sound or leaving evidence of her passing through. It takes her more than two hours to get to Mr. Ages. Her husband was a good friend of Mr. Ages, but Mrs. Frisby has personally only met him once. The clearing where he lives has “a bleak and almost ghostly look” (12) in the winter, a stark contrast to its blooming colors in the summer. Mr. Ages uses flowers, seeds, mushrooms, and roots to create medicines that sometimes aid in curing sick animals. Mrs. Frisby recalls the first time she came to see Mr. Ages, when Timothy was bit by a spider and paralyzed when he was very young. Mrs. Frisby and her husband took turns carrying Timothy to Mr. Ages’s house, where Mr. Ages cured Timothy with a tonic. Mrs. Frisby believes that “this had been the beginning of his frailness. From that time on he tended to stumble a little when he walked, especially when he was tired; he never grew as vigorous as his brother, Martin. But he thought a deal more, and in that he resembled his father” (13).

Mr. Ages has glossy white fur, which is rumored to be due to his old age rather than being born white. He asks after Timothy right away and is gracious about helping Mrs. Frisby try to mend Timothy’s sickness. Upon hearing Timothy’s symptoms, Mr. Ages determines he must have pneumonia and gives Mrs. Frisby three pouches of medicinal powder. Mr. Ages warns that although Timothy’s sickness should diminish after three days, his lungs and susceptibility to a relapse will be extremely high for at least a month afterward. Timothy cannot be exposed to cold, and great care must be taken to be sure of that. Mrs. Frisby sees the sun is starting to go down, thanks Mr. Ages, and heads for home.

Mrs. Frisby decides to take the route straight past the barn to avoid the owls and other wild animals that prowl close to dark in the forest. The cat, whose name is Dragon, will likely be somewhere along her path. Dragon has huge fangs and teeth and white and orange fur. Propelled by thoughts of her sweet son, she makes her way and suddenly hears a loud noise. She finds a crow tangled in a string and caught on a wire fence and goes to help him. She asks the crow why he decided to go picking up string, and he answers, “Because it was shiny” (21). Mrs. Frisby begins gnawing the string to free the crow, and the crow sees Dragon lurking nearby, looking right at him. The string is cut loose, and the crow offers for Mrs. Frisby to hop on his back so they can escape the cat together, and they fly off just as Dragon pounces and misses them. The crow drops Mrs. Frisby off right outside her door, saving her much time, and they thank each other gratefully for saving each other’s lives. The crow introduces himself as Jeremy and offers his help any time. Mrs. Frisby makes her way down the tunnel into her house.

Mrs. Frisby arrives to see her children huddled around Timothy, worried for him. Teresa reports that Timothy woke up twice, and the second time he seemed not to be delirious. He asked where his mother was and went back to sleep. Mrs. Frisby wishes her husband was there to reassure her children like he always had before, but she knows it is now her job to act as both the mother and father for the family and reassures her children that the medicine will help Timothy. Mrs. Frisby shakes Timothy awake, feeds him the medicine, and lets him drift back off to sleep.

Timothy recovers from his fever as predicted, and Mrs. Frisby was cautioned that he must continue to stay warm for a few more weeks. Still, she feels relieved that he is recovering and goes outside to find the March ground thawing into spring. At the same time, she fears the coming moving day, knowing that Mr. Fitzgibbon’s plow will tear up the soil in which she and her family currently reside. It is for this reason that “a fine day set Mrs. Frisby worrying, even as she enjoyed it” (28). The walk to the brook’s edge where the Frisbys made their summer home would still be too cold for Timothy if the thaw brought the plow too soon, and the spring home would not be particularly warm for a few weeks after that. On her walkabout, Mrs. Frisby encounters a shrew who lives nearby. The shrew warns Mrs. Frisby that the frost may melt quite soon and reminds her of a previous summer in which the farmer plowed only 11 days into March. This sends fear into Mrs. Frisby, and moments later, she hears Mr. Fitzgibbon starting his tractor. She knows there must be some solution to the problem at hand but has no idea where to go about finding it.

Mr. Fitzgibbon used his plow for many other things besides plowing the garden, and Mrs. Frisby hoped this was the case today. Mrs. Frisby makes her way up to the corner post, a post with a knot hole in it big enough for her to peek through, and watches what the farmer is doing. She watches the two Fitzgibbon boys, Billy and Paul, come out to help their father. They take the tractor out, plow attached, and Mrs. Frisby overhears them talking about a new part that will be due to arrive in about five days, at which time they can begin plowing. Mrs. Frisby becomes distracted with worry, and on her way back across the garden, escapes Dragon only because he seems too sleepy to get up and chase her. Mrs. Frisby is confused, as Dragon is never too lazy for a chase, and wonders if he might be sick. In the distance, she sees “a troop of dark gray figures marching in columns” (35). They appear to be rats, 40 or more, hauling a length of electrical cable in a rhythmic fashion down into what Mrs. Frisby knew to be their rat hole inside a rose bush in the corner of the farmyard. She is amazed to see them doing this in broad daylight with the cat so close by and wonders what they could possibly need so much wire for.

Mrs. Frisby has several burdens on her plate and is worried about managing them all when she spots Jeremy playing with a piece of tinfoil some distance away. Although Jeremy is not particularly wise, Mrs. Frisby knows he is willing to help her. She approaches, and Jeremy explains that he collects shiny things for a female friend of his. When Jeremy hears about Timothy and the approaching Moving Day, he laments that he has no solution but explains, “I can tell you what we do when we don’t know what to do” (40). Jeremy tells Mrs. Frisby about an old owl, the “oldest animal in the woods” (40), that lives in a hollow of the biggest tree in the forest. Jeremy insists that Mrs. Frisby must ask for help from the owl herself but says he will fly her there and back. Mrs. Frisby feels terrified to enter the dark forest on the back of a crow to see an animal known for hunting mice. Jeremy explains that the owl is always either sleeping or in deep thought during the day and hunting at night, so they must go at dusk: “When the light gets dim, he comes to the entrance of the hollow and watches while the dark comes in. That’s the time to ask him questions” (42). Mrs. Frisby is desperate for anything that might help Timothy, so she agrees to meet Jeremy that evening.

Mrs. Frisby tells her children she is going to see the owl in the hopes of helping Timothy. She purposely refrains from telling them how little time they have and does not tell Timothy about Moving Day at all to avoid worrying him. Jeremy arrives to pick up Mrs. Frisby and the children (aside from Timothy) come to see her off. They are excited to meet a crow and ask how high he can fly. Jeremy bounds into the sky, high above the forest, with Mrs. Frisby clutching his glossy feathers. She dares to look over for a moment while Jeremy soars smoothly through an updraft and sees the garden patch far below. When Mrs. Frisby sees a large snake coursing through the forest, she is astonished and “rather ashamed of her ignorance” (46) to learn from Jeremy that it is the river she has heard so much about.

Finally, Jeremy circles down and lands on a branch that seems to jut at least 10 feet out from its trunk. He points to a hollow at the base of the branch, noting that the owl lives there. Jeremy sees the owl sitting inside his hollow, with “two round yellow eyes glowing in the dark” (47). The owl cannot see them in the light of dusk, but he can hear them and asks who is there. Jeremy announces his presence as well as his lady mouse friend, and the owl is skeptical until he hears that she helped Jeremy escape the cat. The owl explains that he normally does not help mice but is making an exception because Mrs. Frisby helped a bird. He demands that she come inside his hollow where he can see her, and Mrs. Frisby is hesitant, fearing being eaten, but having no other option, she goes inside his spacious hollow.

Mrs. Frisby explains Timothy’s sickness and the upcoming moving day and why she is so certain they only have five days. When the owl hears all of this, he suggests that risking the move is a better option than staying in the home that will surely be plowed into pieces. The owl tells Mrs. Frisby to bundle Timothy up as warmly as possible and hope for a warm day. He regrets to say he has no further advice or solution, and Mrs. Frisby holds back tears. She thanks him cordially and tells the owl her name. When he hears the name Frisby, he remarks that Jonathan Frisby’s “name was not unknown in these woods. And if you are his widow, that puts matters in a different light” (52). He refuses to explain how he knows about Jonathan, but it is clear the owl is aware of the experiment performed on the rats—which Mrs. Frisby still knows nothing about—but he tells her he has been sworn to secrecy. The owl tells Mrs. Frisby to go to them because they will likely help her to move her house to a safe location. He explains that the rats “have—things—ways—you know nothing about. They are not like the rest of us. They are not, I think, even like most other rats” (53), foreshadowing their super intelligence and longevity. He instructs Mrs. Frisby to ask the sentry Justin for Nicodemus, warns that she may be sworn to secrecy, and hints to having helped the rats with some of their projects. The owl wants Mrs. Frisby to ask the rats to move the Frisby home “into the lee of the stone” (54). He confesses to being an admirer of Jonathan Frisby, although he never met him.

The owl empathizes with Mrs. Frisby because, as he explains, the tree in which he lives is slowly dying and cracking. He feels too old and stubborn to leave it and find a new home, so instead he is choosing to live out his days with the tree and die with it when the time comes for it to fall. The owl makes his way off into the night, and after hearing about their conversation Jeremy explains that “into the lee” means “the calm side, the side the wind doesn’t blow from” (56). He expresses his certainty that the rats could move the Frisby home if they wanted to, but he is not sure if they will be willing to help. He tells Mrs. Frisby that the rats have been collecting “bits of metal and machinery” (57) and taking them into the rosebush. They are creating a new home far out in the woods, but they seem to be planning something even more profound than that. With more questions than answers, Mrs. Frisby says goodbye to Jeremy outside her home as darkness falls on the farm.