LOl, Becca --

Sounds like you had a terrific uncle.

You know, I'm thinking, now, that the "Giant Tooth Rat" may just be an example of the folk process filtering through my own particular family.

Perhaps my grandmother (or great-grand), hearing the Spanish "Raton" mistook mouse for rat. And my mother (or perhaps myself, and my own foggy memory) superimposed the human tooth fairy over that, giving Raton Perez human size.