I always feel like we've been spoiled by not experiencing some of the harsh realities of country life.

I remember reading about rodent plagues in the 19th century in the Oz country, beyond the more obvious things of them getting into food etc

A ham was in the larder, hanging from a hook. The mice worked out to climb across a ceiling beam, down the rope and ate the ham from the inside out, leaving just the outer skin, with a bunch of dead mice inside it.

People would put each of their 4 legs of their beds in a bucket of water in an attempt to keep them off the bed and get some sleep. Each morning, the buckets were full of drowned mice.

The yuckiest thing I read was that women who put on face cream at night would be woken up by the rodents licking it off their faces.