Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Puffin Modern Classics)

by Robert O'Brien

  Where was the cat’s bowl? Mrs Frisby looked to her right as Mr Ages had said. There it was, blue, with words inscribed around the side. Yet something was wrong. It was not two feet from the cabinet, but more like four or five. In the corner, where it should have been, rose four round wooden legs. She realized that she was looking at the bottom of a kitchen stool.

  No matter, she thought. The extra distance is just a couple of feet. Mr Ages had not mentioned a stool, but perhaps they moved it around. She crawled to her right as close to the bowl as she could get without showing herself, and tore open the package.

  Just as she did this Mrs Fitzgibbon walked over from the stove. Her hand appeared, picked up the bowl, and Mrs Frisby heard it thump on the counter over her head. A cutting sound — a tin opener — the scrape of a spoon, and the bowl was back on the floor. The strong fishy smell of catfood. Mrs Fitzgibbon walked away.

  Now.

  Mrs Frisby moved swiftly out into the room, across the open floor, holding the powder, her eyes intent only on the bowl. She was no longer trembling. She poured in the powder, which instantly dissolved in the moist catfood. Still clutching the paper, she turned and sped towards the cabinet.

  With a bang, the lights went dim. The ceiling, which had somehow become curved, was filled with little round moons. Mrs Frisby kept running, and her face struck a cold, hard wall of metal.

  A voice shouted:

  ‘Mother! Don’t let Dragon in yet. I’ve caught a mouse.’

  Billy, the young Fitzgibbon son, had been sitting on the kitchen stool, his feet up on the rung, eating berries from a colander. The colander, upside down, was now over Mrs Frisby.

  Seven Dead Rats

  From a birdcage, Mrs Frisby watched the Fitzgibbons eat dinner. There was dinner for her, too — breadcrumbs, cheese, and bits of carrot — on the floor of the cage, along with a small bowl of water. The cage had been occupied until a few months before by a yellow canary named Porgy, who had lived in it for five years and then died of old age.

  To get her out from under the colander, Billy had slid a piece of cardboard beneath it, pinching her foot sharply in the process, so that it hurt when she walked. She had been transferred first to a shoebox.

  ‘Can I keep it?’ Billy had asked his mother.

  ‘What for? It’s just a field mouse.’

  ‘For a pet. I like it.’ Billy had tried to look at Mrs Frisby through some holes he had punched in the top of the box, but it was dark inside.

  ‘I suppose so. For a few days. You’ll have to feed it.’

  ‘I think I’ll put it in Porgy’s cage. I can’t see it in this box. It must be hungry. It was trying to eat Dragon’s food. Dumb mouse. It might have been killed.’

  No one had noticed the small torn piece of paper at first; then Mrs Fitzgibbon had absently picked it up and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  A few days! Mrs Frisby felt sick. And after a few days — then what? Would they let her go? Or would Billy plead for a few more? But even if they did set her free — her children were alone; the rats were coming tonight to move her house. Why had Billy picked today, of all days, to sit on the stool? She had not the heart to eat the food that lay on the cage floor. She felt like weeping.

  Paul came in for dinner, followed by his father. He looked at her in the cage.

  ‘Why don’t you let it go?’ he said to Billy. ‘Poor little thing. It’s scared to death.’

  ‘No it’s not. It’s just not used to the cage.’

  ‘I bet it will die.’

  ‘I bet it won’t.’

  ‘You can’t just put wild animals in cages. You have to catch them when they’re babies.’

  ‘They do it in zoos.’

  ‘Yes, but they know more about it. Anyway, a lot of those die, too.’

  ‘It’s strange that it was in here at all,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘I haven’t seen any signs of mice. I didn’t think we had any.’

  They sat at the table, and Mrs Fitzgibbon served the stew. It was a long, square-cut farm table, big enough to feed, besides the family, the four hired hands who would be working with Mr Fitzgibbon during the planting and harvesting. The Fitzgibbons sat together around one end of it.

  Mrs Frisby’s cage hung from a metal stand in the corner on the opposite side of the room, quite high up, so that the floor where she crouched was above their heads. She could watch them, looking down; but if she retreated to the far side of the cage, they could not see her, nor she them. She kept hoping that Paul would resume the argument with Billy and win it, or at least convince Mr or Mrs Fitzgibbon that they should let her go.

  But Paul was now busy eating. So, moving quietly, she crept to the back of the cage. There was a sliding door halfway up the side, which Billy had lifted to put her in. Remembering Nicodemus’s story, she looked at it, wondering if she could climb to it, if she could get it open if she did. Not now, but later, when they had left the kitchen. Maybe. But it looked quite big and heavy.

  She thought about her children again. Surely, when Justin had waited a little longer, he would realize that something had gone wrong. He would go and talk to them. But what could he tell them? ‘Children, your mother went into the kitchen with Dragon and she hasn’t come out.’ No. But whatever he said, they would be dreadfully frightened and worried. Poor Cynthia! Poor Timothy — poor all of them.

  She had one small satisfaction. Dragon, who had been admitted after she was safely caged, had eaten his bowl of catfood greedily, sleeping powder and all, purring as he licked the last scraps from the bottom.

  Billy was looking at the cage.

  ‘There,’ he cried. ‘It walked. I saw it. I told you it was all right.’ He started up from his chair.

  ‘Billy, stay in your place and eat your stew,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘The mouse can wait.’

  ‘Speaking of mice,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon, who had driven to town that afternoon, ‘there was quite a stir today at Henderson’s hardware store.’

  ‘About mice?’

  ‘No, but nearly. About rats. I went in to order the new linchpin, and there was quite a group there, talking about an odd thing that had happened.

  ‘It seems that six or seven rats got themselves electrocuted there a few days ago. Very strange. Henderson sells motors — he has a whole shelf of them. The rats, for some reason, had got on the shelf. He says it looked as if they were fooling with one of the motors, trying to move it.’

  ‘That’s a new one,’ said Paul. ‘Rats stealing motors.’

  ‘They weren’t really, of course. Anyway, it happened during the night; when he — Henderson — came into the shop in the morning, he tried to turn on the lights, and the fuse was blown. He found the rats all grouped around the motor. It had been left plugged in, though it was turned off. They must have been gnawing at the insulation for some reason — at least that’s what he thinks. They caused a short circuit, and all bunched together like that, the current went through them and killed the lot.’

  ‘Pretty good kind of a rat trap, I’d say,’ Mrs Fitzgibbon remarked.

  Mrs Frisby was now listening to the conversation very closely. Dragon had stretched out on the floor, looking drowsy.

  ‘Wait,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘That’s only the beginning. It seems that the local weekly was hard up for news. They heard about it and sent their reporter over.’

  ‘Fred Smith,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon.

  ‘Yes. Fred wrote a little article about it, with a headline, MECHANIZED RATS INVADE HARDWARE STORE. Something like that. Well, it attracted more attention than he expected. The next thing they knew, believe it or not, the federal government got into it. They sent a squad over there from the Public Health Service with a truckload of equipment.’

  ‘Just on account of seven rats?’ said Billy. ‘They should send the truck over here. We’ve got more than that.’

  ‘That’s just what I said,’ Mr Fitzgibbon went on. ‘And do you know? They’re going to. I was joking, of course, but the man in charge of the group
didn’t take it as a joke at all. He wanted to know where the farm was, how far away, how many acres, what I raised, how many rats I thought there were. He acted really interested. It seems they wanted to examine the dead rats at Henderson’s, but they couldn’t. He’d already sent them to the town dump, and they were incinerated.’

  ‘I never heard of such a thing,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon. ‘All that fuss over a few dead rats.’

  ‘I have,’ said Paul. ‘And I bet I know what they’re after.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They think the rats have rabies. They don’t like to say so because it makes people panicky.’

  ‘What’s rabies?’ asked Billy.

  ‘A disease,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘A very bad one, spread by animals. You know, Paul, I think you’re probably right. That would explain why the Public Health Service is in it. Epidemic control. Anyway, they’re planning to check on the rats all over this area.’

  ‘Don’t you remember,’ Paul said, ‘a few years ago when everybody had to lock up their dogs? And some people were shooting every dog they saw. That’s why they keep it quiet until they’re sure.

  ‘And another thing. They taught us in the vet course in school that when an animal starts acting strange, it may be a sign of rabies. Well, chewing electric wires — that’s strange enough.’

  ‘And they think some rats here might be infected?’ Mrs Fitzgibbon sounded worried.

  ‘I suppose they must,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon, ‘though they never mentioned rabies at all.’

  ‘When are they coming?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. Saturday morning. The man in charge, a Doctor somebody, said they had some more checking to do in town tomorrow. They’re coming with an extermination truck — cyanide gas, I think.’

  ‘I can tell them where to look,’ Paul said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Billy. ‘Under the rosebush.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘In fact, they’ll probably want to bulldoze that bush out of there. I can do that with the big tractor.’

  ‘Bulldoze my rosebush?’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon indignantly. ‘They will not!’

  ‘Look at it this way,’ her husband said. ‘I’ve got to get rid of those rats anyway. I’d already decided to; they’re stealing too much feed — seeds, too, more all the time. If I paid an exterminator to do it, he’d charge a couple of hundred dollars. If the government will do it free, why shouldn’t we let them?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Fitzgibbon, still not soothed, ‘then you can spend the money to buy me some new rosebushes.’

  ‘That’s just what I had in mind,’ said Mr Fitzgibbon with a smile. ‘And maybe some lilacs, too.’ Mrs Fitzgibbon had always wanted a lilac bush; they were her favourite shrubs.

  Mrs Frisby did not believe at all that it was rabies the men were looking for. She wished Mr Fitzgibbon had been able to remember the name of the ‘Doctor somebody’. And now she had another urgent reason to get out of the cage. Somehow, she had to warn Nicodemus.

  Dragon slept on the kitchen floor.

  Escape

  At ten by the kitchen clock, the Fitzgibbons went to bed. Dragon was put out, the doors locked, the lights turned off. The first of these things was done by Billy, on instruction from his mother, not without some difficulty. He opened the door.

  ‘Come on, Dragon. Out.’

  ‘He won’t get up.’

  ‘I never saw such a lazy cat. He gets worse every day.’

  Finally Dragon, protesting with only the sleepiest of whines, was picked up and deposited on the back porch. He scarcely opened his eyes.

  By that time it was dark. Mrs Frisby waited a few minutes until she was sure they were really gone and until her eyes adjusted so she could see the bars of her cage. They were vertical bars, smooth and no thicker than match sticks, which made them slippery to climb, but by turning more or less sideways, she was able to grip them fairly well. She inched her way up to the sliding door and tried to lift it.

  She could tell from the first pull that it was no use. The door was stiff and it was heavy, and she could not get a good enough grip on either it or the cage wall to exert much pressure. Still she kept trying, first lifting on the middle of the door, then on one corner, then another, straining every muscle. In half an hour she admitted defeat, at least for the moment, and climbed back down to the bottom of the cage. She sat there, shaking from the effort, and thought.

  Somehow, she had to get out. Her children, even now, would be alone in the dark house, alone at night for the first time. Martin and Teresa would be trying to reassure the younger ones; yet they themselves would be sadly frightened. What would they think? Since she had not told them about Dragon and the sleeping powder, she hoped that perhaps they would decide she had, for some reason, stayed with the rats.

  But at eleven, which could not be far off (she could not read the kitchen clock in the dark), the rats would arrive to move the house. Or would they, knowing — since Justin must have told them — that she had not come out of the kitchen? She thought they would. She hoped they would, and that Justin would go with them and talk to the children and try to calm their fear. There was something about Justin, a kind of easy confidence, that would help them.

  She no longer had any doubt, of course, that the rats could move her house. It was a generous thing to do, especially at a time when they were hurrying so in their Plan, their own move. And they had no idea yet of how little time they really had, of the new danger that crowded upon them. If she could only get out! She would run and warn them, and it might still not be too late.

  She thought: It’s a good plan and a brave one. It would be the first time in all the world that intelligent beings, besides men, had ever tried to start a real civilization of their own. They ought to have a chance. It was not right that they should be killed at the last minute. Or captured. Could it be that they — the men who were coming — were somehow connected with Nimh? Or was it more likely, as Paul had guessed, that they were only worried about rabies? She decided it didn’t really matter. The result would be the same. The day after next the truck would come with its poison gas and that would be the end of all their plans. Unless they could be warned. Wearily, she got up to climb the wall and try the door again.

  She heard a noise.

  It was in the kitchen, near her cage, a small scuffling on the hard linoleum floor.

  ‘Now what kind of a bird can that be, with no wings?’

  It was Justin’s voice, very soft, and he was laughing.

  ‘Justin!’

  ‘I thought you might like to come home. Your children are asking after you.’

  ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘They’re fine. They were worried, but I told them I’d bring you back. They seemed to believe me.’

  ‘But how did you know …?’

  ‘That you were here? You forget. I was waiting just under the cabinet. I heard what happened. I felt like biting Billy full of holes. But as soon as I heard that you were safely in the cage, I went and told the children you were all right, but that you’d be a little late. I didn’t tell them exactly why.

  ‘Now, let’s get you out.’

  ‘I tried. I couldn’t open the door.’

  ‘I’ll get it open. I brought along a few tools — burglar’s tools, you might say — in my back pack. Should I climb up the stand? No. It looks slippery. I think I’ll try the curtain.’

  And in a matter of seconds Justin had swarmed up a window curtain a foot away, and she heard a thump as he leaped and landed on top of the cage, which swayed under the impact. The noise was slight, but they both listened intently for a moment to see if it produced another, from upstairs. All quiet.

  ‘Now let me look at that door.’ Justin climbed easily down the side of the cage.

  ‘Oh, I hope you can get it open.’

  ‘I can,’ Justin said, examining it, ‘easily enough. But I don’t think I will.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you couldn’t,’ Ju
stin said, ‘and they’ll know that. So they won’t be curious, let’s make it open itself. As I expected, it doesn’t have real hinges.’ He had pulled a small metal bar out of his back pack, and was working as he talked. ‘Just little wire rings. Cheap, flimsy things. They’re always coming apart.’ As he said that, one of them came apart; the door sagged and hung crazily by one corner. ‘There, you see? You couldn’t help it if they put you in a defective cage. Come on out.’

  Mrs Frisby climbed through and stood with Justin on the top of the cage.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we shinny down the stand like a fireman’s pole. You go out the way you came in — under the cabinet and through the hole. I’ll go out the way I came in — through the attic. I’ll meet you outside.’

  ‘Justin,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘there’s something I’ve got to tell you, something I learned …’

  ‘Wait till we’re out,’ said Justin. ‘We’ve got to hurry. You see, we’re having a little trouble moving your cement block.’ He was off, running silently into the front of the house, from which the stairway led up two flights to the attic.

  Mrs Frisby crawled under the cabinet, searched in total darkness for the small hole, and finally felt one foot slip down. She dropped through. The square opening in the foundation was easier to find, it glowed palely ahead of her, lit with moonlight.

  Justin was waiting for her as she came out of the corner of the screen. The night was warm, and a half-moon shone on the farmyard.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what was it you wanted to tell me?’ He spoke seriously; he had heard the urgency in her voice. They hurried towards the garden, rounding the back porch. There, a dark heap in the moonlight, lay Dragon, no threat to anyone tonight.

  ‘Some exterminators are coming to poison all of you.’ Mrs Frisby told him, as briefly as she could, of the conversation she had heard at the Fitzgibbons’ dinner table.

  ‘Seven rats,’ Justin said. ‘Rabies. It might be. But I’ll bet it was Jenner. When are the men supposed to come?’