I am Teresa, the eldest child of the Brisby family.

(reading from her diary) The evening that Uncle Jacob arrived was exciting, but it was unfortunately preceded by my same old boring day.

Early that morning Cynthia was digging through the closet and making a lot of noise. I went to see what all the fuss was about, but she just yelled, "I have to find Dad's jacket...for Mom!" She is always doing strange things like this, so I just ignored her and went about my chores.

Preparing breakfast has become my duty because Mother has gotten into the habit of getting up late. She has been depressed since early summer. I think that she has begun to doubt her own sanity, and that most likely stems from her hallucination of the Rats of NIMH. She claims that they helped her last year when Timothy was sick and Moving Day came early. We didn't see them, and when we went to see this underground city that she kept telling us about, all we found was a cave. We all know that Mothers memory is defective--she can not remember anything about her life before she met Father.

Sometimes I hear her talking to herself at night, trying to remember these details she has lost. Lately she has been staying up most of the night and seems to be in a trance during the day.

Around noon, Martin and I went out to get some firewood. (This is another one of my dull chores) Nothing unusual happened other than we saw Jeremy hiding from someone. He was in quite a hurry, but said hello to us anyway. We got back home in the early evening, and just as we had finished putting the firewood away, Timothy came running in the door screaming.