Hi, and welcome to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. This novel centers around a colony of escaped lab rats, the rats of NIMH. They live in a technologically sophisticated and literate society mimicking that of humans. They come to the aid of Mrs. Frisby, a field mouse who seeks to protect her children and home from destruction by a farmer's plow. Listen and follow along. Send me a message for your free pdf copy of this book. The Sickness of Timothy Frisby Mrs Frisby, the head of a family of field mice, lived in an underground house in the vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr Fitzgibbon. It was a winter house, such as some field mice move to when food becomes too scarce, and the living too hard in the woods and pastures. In the soft earth of a bean, potato, pea and asparagus patch there is plenty of food left over for mice after the human crop has been gathered. Mrs Frisby and her family were especially lucky in the house itself. It was a slightly damaged cement block, the hollow kind with two oval holes through it; it had somehow been abandoned in the garden during the summer and lay almost completely buried, with only a bit of one corner showing above ground, which is how Mrs Frisby had discovered it. It lay on its side in such a way that the solid parts of the block formed a roof and a floor, both waterproof, and the hollows made two spacious rooms. Lined with bits of leaves, grass, cloth, cotton fluff, feathers and other soft things Mrs Frisby and her children had collected, the house stayed dry, warm and comfortable all winter. A tunnel to the surface-earth of the garden, dug so that it was slightly larger than a mouse and slightly smaller than a cat’s foreleg, provided access, air, and even a fair amount of light to the living room. The bedroom, formed by the second oval, was warm but dark, even at midday. A short tunnel through the earth behind the block connected the two rooms.