Summer brought a phenomenon never seen in the mountains. We awoke one morning to find the camp filled with huge rats. Black rats, brown rats, and spotted rats ran wildly from the river. They were into everything. Baby chicks were killed and partially eaten. Food for the livestock was scattered. Holes gnawed in the feed sacks left grain pouring onto the ground. Before morning was over, they had found every hole and weak spot in our homes. They ran across the floors and under the furniture. Women forgot their squeamishness and were battering them with brooms and mops. Men got guns and clubs to try to herd them away. Every time one was killed, two more showed up to take its place.
All our metal and glass containers were used to protect our food. Lamps stayed lit all night. We didn’t dare step out of bed in the darkness. There was no place to keep the livestock food away from the rats. Hundreds were killed. We took sticks, clubs, hoes, or any weapons available when we went outside. I was thankful I didn’t have a tiny baby to watch constantly. When we fed the pigs, the rats came in droves to the troughs. They were so greedy, they tumbled into the swill and ate while they swam. The pigs squealed helplessly as food was taken out of their mouths.
The invasion lasted about a month before they went en masse on up the river. We felt a great plague had been called down upon us and was now lifted. Men no longer carried guns every time they went out the door. Sunday afternoons, which had been used as hunting days for the rats, were once again silent and peaceful.
We heard they were Norwegian wharf rats, which had come from a seaport in Louisiana. It was thought that they came up the Mississippi River, The Tennessee River, and eventually into Little River. Almost like one of the plagues in Egypt, they came and went without warning. In spite of the rat invasion, we felt everything was going well on the job.
—Dorie Woman of the Mountains written by Florence Cope Bush
Yikes! I don’t mind snakes and I don’t mind spiders. I don’t even mind the bears that roam around our house, but I surely am terrified of rats and mice. I might not have made it if I’d been at Dorie’s house during that invasion.
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a used copy of Dorie Woman of the Mountains written by Florence Cope Bush. To be entered in the giveaway leave a comment on this post. Giveaway ends November 22, 2025.
Tipper
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I didn’t think I wanted to read this passage…I cannot even imagine the scene so well described! What a horror that must have been. Would love to read this book.
Listening to you reading this book was such a blessing!! I’d love to have a copy
When I was a kid, mice and rats were common at our place in the mountains. The only place to safely store small items was inside an old washing machine–the kind with the swing-away wringer–in the tub, with the lid on tight. Rodents couldn’t get inside. When I went to college, a guy in the dorm had a pet white rat named Cyrano de Bergerat. Clever name, but still a rat.
Definitely sounded like a plague! That would be awful to live through.
Insane! We have rats in the attic where I work, you can hear them running overhead. Sometimes we are lucky enough to trap one or two, but there are always more to take their place. YIKES!
As always, praying for Granny.
I hate rats!
What a terrible trial to go through! About 30 years ago we had two mice in our house, and I thought that was bad. This was a thousand times worse!
I retired from a manufacturing plant that had a fair amount of huge rats in the old buildings. I saw a few myself and I swear they were as big as large kittens. Thinking about them gives me goosebumps.
The hogs I have known would kill and eat a rat in a heartbeat and look for more. A rat who tried to take food out of their mouths would soon be that food. Snakes too! Even pison snakes didn’t stand a chance. The pison didn’t bother the hog at all.
Reading this made me have the “heebies”!! Dorie had to have been a brave woman
Wow, so interesting…and scary! Sounds like a great read.
Rats! How dreadful. A very descriptive reading nonetheless.
This certainly sounds like something out of the Bible! Sounds like they needed some fiests and rat terriers to help out.
It makes me think of my bosses wife. She bought herself a brand new expensive car. While she was driving one day, a rat had gotten into her car. It scared her soooo bad that she immediately abandoned her car and told her husband that she would never sit in that car again and he could do whatever he wanted to do with it. I think he sold it. She never drove it again. If my sister saw a rat, she would abandoned her house. There was a mouse that got hung up inside her baby doll box under the stairs and she spent the whole day standing on her piano stool making noise like a cat. When her husband came home, she told him to get the gun and shoot it. He said that he might blow a hole in the wall. She didn’t care as long as that mouse was gone. To this day she is terrified of a mouse. A rat? That would put her into her heavenly home. lol
I don’t like rats.
That would be my nightmare! People had to go through crazy things in those days.
When our boys were young we bought a pair of mallard ducks. Soon we had 10 more ducks. We kept them in a pen because they would leave an awful mess on our porch and carport. One morning we went out to feed them and noticed several of the baby ducks were gone. We also noticed holes in the ground. There were no feathers and no sign of a struggle but the ducks were gone and everyday more went missing. We finally figured out it was rats. They were taking the whole baby ducks down their tunnels. We set our remaining ducks free at the creek behind our house and then set up huge rat traps with peanut butter. We caught over 20 huge rats. That definitely ended our duck raising days.
One little field mouse got into my house a couple of years ago. I screamed so loud that the eyes of the mouse were bugging out. I was on the phone at the time so I hopped on my kitchen table and called for backup. My brother in law brought traps over. If I had seen rats for a month I would have to be sedated.
Now that was a nightmare for sure!
Eww, I really don’t like rats and mice. I can deal with most wildlife(critters), but rats make my skin crawl.
That is one sight that I would not want to see! Dealing with mice can be bad enough, but rats can be a whole other story. We don’t see rats around here, but mice are around, so they’re killed in the traps we set outside.
My word! I would have slept in a van, too, or even a tiny clown car. The thought of a rat invasion makes my stomach do flip-flops.
Hugs and all the best to you and your family.
That is unbelievably terrifying!!
We’ve had rats around here for the past 5 years or so. They keep getting in around my dryer vent and I absolutely loathe them. They can destroy things in a hurry! I had some yarn in a trash bag in the extra bedroom and one got ahold of it and chewed it up and made a terrible mess. I’m not afraid of them but I also don’t particularly want one too close to me. I’ve got to figure out how to keep them from getting inside and get rid of the ones that do. I have pets so I don’t want to put poison out for fear the animals will find it. I’ve tried the pet safe pellets…the rats apparently weren’t interested in those. We’ve caught some in traps but more always come. I think one of the neighbors must have something that attracts them because we’ve done all the preventative measures we can think of and they still show up. I’m about ready to move my dryer outside and seal the darn vent up! Thank goodness it’s not by the hundreds but a couple here and there is still a big problem
How horrible for them. No pest control guys to help! And I imagine that they didn’t know if it would end.
I grew up on the outskirts of Nashville. We had train tracks that ran about 15 -20 feet from our back door. Mice and rats were a constant bother especially in winter. Mama hated them with a passion. Said they carry diseases. She even “borrowed” my Aunt’s tom cat to ferret them out and get rid of them. At night you could hear them in the attic gnawing at whatever. Needless to say I inherited Mama’s dislike for them. Florance’s situation whould have driven me crazy.
Good morning, Tipper and Tipper fans! RATS?? That would be a definite and positive NO!! My sister is so afraid of mice that when ONE got in the house one winter, she had her husband go buy every trap in the store and she slept in their van till that mouse was caught! She’s still scared of them. Walt Disney and children’s authors make them look so cute, but they aren’t. I don’t have a problem setting a trap and emptying it, but I definitely am not going to touch one, even if I have gloves on!! So here’s yet another Appalachian setting book I could drool over, Tipper! I hope everyone has a great day, that Granny is in not much pain bless her sweet heart, and God showers us all with His love and grace!
Rats and Bears..no thank you!!
Nope, nopety, no! Yikes.
I think I would have moved out until it was over.
Yikes indeed!! I am thankful for our neighbor’s cat that roams around at night hunting.
Yikes! Is right!
While reading this I was imagining the horror! How awful! I would lose my mind…
Oh my! We have had rats around the barn. But, that would be a living nightmare!
You could run me out of town with a rat!!
As soon as I read the second sentence, I knew it was Dorie Woman of the Mountains. That visual imagery will never leave my mind!
Rhonda- I did too!! Loved Dorie…
I have seen and dealt with rats all my life. As a kid, one I had caught by the tail bit me and gave me rat-bite fever, which almost killed me. Just this year, we paid big bucks to have an exterminator do an attic crawl to find and remove a couple of dead rats then fumigate to kill the awful smell. Maintaining bird feeders attracted the vermin. Our birds are now on their own! In the story today, it is likely that the part about multicolored rats is an embellishment. I think the only calicoes would be found in a pet shop, not in nature.
I don’t like mice, but I don’t mind trapping them. I hate rats and only had one encounter with one in my life. We lived in a house built in the 1890’s and a rat found its way in through an old chimney. One night I saw its ugly, long tail go from behind my bed through a door into the old “Servant’s Quarters”. The back staircase went from there to the kitchen. My husband caught the rat on sticky paper he left on a stair, and finished the rat off with a broom. It was awful!
Yikes that makes me think of the little house on the prairie when the plaque of rats got into their meal grain storage at the grain & feed store which cause several to get sick with typhous disease some died from eating the meal they had purchased to make their bread goods from they couldn’t figure out what was making many ill and they check the meal store and when the opened it up it was full of rats and he had to burn it to the ground. I’m just glad nothing like this happened with Dori and the h lm whole community with this river eats that invaded there community. I’ve always heard the would eat the finger and toes right off a new born baby or toddler. Just horrible I can remember when one of my friends said they had rats that invaded there home on a farm the lived on and she had gotten bitten by a rat right on her pinky it about bit it off she said. No thank you to the rats .
I just love that book! I am truly horrified thinking of their experience with rats, though! I hope I never encounter them.
I recently bought a covered borosilicate (the good kind) glass casserole dish made in the Czech Republic. The dish itself is 3 quarts plus it has a lid that will flip over and make a 2 quart dish.
Everything I had already had either didn’t have a lid or the lid didn’t fit right. Now I have a lid that fits, so it will work like a Dutch oven or work as deep casserole and a shallow one or I can cook in either one and have a cover. I inspected it closely and it’s flawless. I’m tickled to death with it! I’ll bet you would like one too!
EEEEEKKK!!!!!!
Maybe this story is where that saying ” Let me let you get back to your rat killing” came from? In any case, I’ve never seen a rat in real life. Although, my husband killed one at work with a backhoe by accident. My thankful November is that I haven’t seen rats like in this story!!!
Rats go away!!
Happy Thanksgiving.
I cannot imagine the horror of a plague of rats. Just imagine what they left “behind”. I think I’d never feel clean again!
I’m really not afraid of rats and mice but they surely can be destructive little pests.
Just reading this account of the rats makes my skin crawl! Where we live there is no snakes or rats, which makes me happy because I hate them both with a passion! We have two cats that keep the mice population down. Have a great day everyone!
As a child in the country, we had mice from time to time in our house and in the chicken and cow feed in the barn. Rats sometimes in the barn. But a swarm like that would be scary. I’m reminded of the old saying “go on about your rat killing “ that would have been a full time job with those numbers. Would love to read the rest of the book.
Ken, my Granddaddys along with other country folks would keep either a king snake or black snake/rat snake in their barn to help take care of rats.
Rats are the worst!
That would definitely be my worst nightmare! I cannot abide rats!
In the midst of tearing out our old kitchen last week a mouse got inside. I set two traps with cheese and caught it before bedtime. I have a black snake in my workshop that keeps the mice and rats under control. My wife will come to the door to call me but not inside.
I meant to say in my comment, rats, snakes, spiders and other things like this don’t bother me. I will say, I have never been in a situation like this with that many rats. I don’t panic around any stinging bee, but show them a lot respect. I have never met one of Tipper’s friendly bees!
I had problems getting the post to come up this morning, I have read another story similar to this about rats invading a Kentucky town located on a river like this. I remember seeing “field rats” around our hog pen when we would take slop to our hogs. Sometimes Daddy would take his 22 rifle with him and shoot them. As a younger kid, these rats seemed to be as big as squirrels. I no longer see rats this big.
Today I go to the visitation and tomorrow to the funeral of a very dear friend. I have spent a lot of happy time with this friend. After having a kidney removed on Monday of last week, he was recovering real well, Saturday he and his wife were sitting on the porch enjoying the warm weather, when he stood up to go inside and feel over dead. Enjoy every minute you can with your family and friends, you never know when it might be the last time.
Oh, my word! When I think of what that family endured it makes me feel embarrassed about the fit I had when I saw an earwig the other day. They were certainly made of sterner stuff than me!!
Oh, I would just freak out!
Would love to have this book to read over, and over.
Glad nobody was hurt in the casserole explosion. I will tell you, I am rethinking use of some of my old favorite dishes to cold dishes only! Love, peace and joy to all!
RATS! Heebie Jeebies!
Mercy me, I don’t like mice or rats either. My neighbors are bad to pile up their trash/garbage for a month before hauling it off. I hire a trash service that comes every week to haul off my on little 15 to 30 gallon bag. Way down at the head of the hollow they had a rat population explosion at the hardware store when the family next door moved in after buying the house and were tossing their trash into the outbuilding in their back yard. Rats were so thick in the covered lumber building at the store that you couldn’t see the floor. For some reason they called me to come look and tell them what to do. I told them that the neighbors were the problem and to go tell them to haul off that trash today. I told them to put out Jiffy cornbread mix with sugar and double parts of baking soda (1 box of jiffy, 1/2 jiffy box of sugar and 1 box of baking soda. Stir it up good. refill the boxes half way with the mix and set it out where they are along a wall or other straight edge. Fill other containers too if there are hundreds of them. Keep putting it out every day. It should kill them all in a few days.
Loved your reading of this book. Couldn’t wait for the next reading. Definitely my favorite so far.
Tipper,
Florence Cope Bush wrote some very interesting material and would be a joy to read.
Growing up, we never considered rats serving any useful purpose, but your post made me curious enough to find out that rats play important roles in the ecosystem by helping to control waste, aerate soil and numerous other purposes.
Needless to say, that does not make me a fan of rats!
Tipper, I agree with you. I hate snakes and I hate bats, but I absolutely hate mice. Thank goodness my husband will put out traps if we suspect we have any. We enjoy your videos and we continue to pray for granny.
Yes, I agree!! No rats for me!
That is a very interesting story. I have read that account somewhere earlier, but had not read or heard about this event anywhere else. I was wondering if anyone else had. Sources?
I am thankful to visit with you and your family each morning.
I’m with you Tipper! Now, I don’t like snakes at all either, but rats and mice are right up there with snakes for me! Whew!
That would be horrific. I’ve never seen a rat outside of a pet enclosure (a friend in high school had a pet rat).
My goodness, that definitely sounded like a plague straight out of the bible. I pray we dont deal with something like that in our lifetime.
good morning, God bless you, I just have got re subscribed to blind pig and the acorn, so I can hear and see Paul sing and play, and I’m subscribing to celebrating Appalachia, God bless you and have a great day, God bless Granny Wilson
My word! That’d be awful! I’m not afraid of them, but they do startle me….I’m might be afraid with that many though. I’m deathly afraid of snakes. Hate them with a passion. Gives me chills thinking about it.