Tooth Mouse

January 30, 2011
5:39pm

I just got back to my house from a lovely weekend with the Broodryks. They are such a wealth of information on the history of Ekuphumleni and the whole of this African region. I love their company and only wish I knew more of the Afrikaans language. :-P The Afrikaans people are descendants from the Dutch settlers in South Africa, and learning about this completely different African culture is fascinating. I am very blessed to have the Broodryk family at A1.

Anyway, they told me this weekend about the Tooth Mouse. This is an interesting variation of the Tooth Fairy. A young Afrikaans child, after losing one of those precious baby teeth, will place the tooth in a shoe next to his/her bed. During the night the Tooth Mouse will come and exchange the tooth for some money. It is said that this mouse builds his special house out of the teeth he collects.

According to an event in the Broodryk family history, the Tooth Mouse does not want any other kinds of teeth for his house. The Broodryk children, now grown adults, had supplied the Tooth Mouse with a shoe full of cow teeth collected from the community. It is said that they removed the teeth from the discarded skulls, washed, and polished them. They arose the next morning expecting to cash in on their creativity, and found out that the Tooth Mouse can only build his house with young children’s baby teeth. Nothing else is known about this magical creature and his tooth house. It was discovered, though, that both the Tooth Fairy and the Tooth Mouse have had to deal with inflation. Every generation is astounded at the next generation’s reward for wriggling out one of their loose teeth.