This is a memory snippet that slipped to the front of my consciousness the other day, and won't leave:

When I was about five or six years old, and about to lose my first baby tooth, and getting all excited about getting my first Tooth Fairy quarter, my mother said to me, in all seriousness: "You know, the Tooth Fairy is really a giant rat, that comes into your room..."

I thought she was flat-out crazy. I mean, that went against everything the popular culture pointed at. For years and years, I thought that was just her, pulling my leg, and deliberately trying to counter the predominate culture's attempts to fit me into the lace and daisies mold for little girls (she'd also stop, in the middle of reading a storybook, like Babar the Elephant, and point out exactly how it was sexist tripe -- to a four-year old...).

Then, one year, in high school, I came upon a book of animals in folklore, and in the chapter on rats, it mentioned that rats had such strong teeth (they do -- in reality, they can chew through solid concrete with no problem), that parents used to leave their children's baby teeth by rat holes, in the hopes that the rat would give one of its own in trade -- one that would never break, or get a cavity.

Moral of the story?

Never doubt The Mother!!

Now, to make this a musical thread: does anyone know of any songs, or children's rhymes, that mention the tooth-rat (Checked Wikipedia, last night, and the tooth fairy article mentioned the "tooth mouse" tradition in Spain)?

I also suspect that my mother got this from her mother, who was from Louisianna -- that has both Spanish and French connections.