My Uncle Dan – The Mouse Man

There are few people that I can tell you that I actually remember the first time that I ever met them, but I vividly remember meeting Uncle Dan.

I don’t know how old I was but I was a small child. I was at Nanny’s House (My Mom’s Mother), she lived next door to us and I went to see her all the time. I just loved to sit at her table and watch her. She always had something good to eat. She made the best chicken and dumplings that I ever ate.

Well, anyway, I was sitting at the table by the window and in the back door walked this great big man. He was tall. My dad was 6 ft. 3 ½ inches but this guy was bigger. He was wearing a khaki uniform and a funny looking hat. Nanny ran over and hugged him.

He was in his military uniform. He has just recently gotten back from Korea. Now I was starting to wonder who in the heck this big red headed guy was. Nannie told me that this was my Uncle Dan.

When I was growing up, my mom took us over to Uncle Dan’s. I remember thinking; he really has a strange job. You see, I had heard of cattle ranchers, goat herders, and even chicken farmers, but my Uncle Dan raised mice. I thought most people are trying to get rid of these little creatures and he was raising them. I couldn't imagine eating them. He had this long old barn that was just full of them. They didn’t smell very good and the chorus of thousands of little mice was deafening.

It took me forever to understand what he was doing. Most people had uncles that drove trucks, fixed cars, worked in an office, but mine raised mice. Specifically, he raised white mice. Now I am not trying to be racist here, but there wasn’t a Mexican or black mouse in the bunch. They were all white mice.

Apparently many laboratories around the country used white mice in their research. Uncle Dan shipped these mice around the country. I don’t know how he got into that business but I know that later on he quit the mice business and went to work for the University of Texas.

A story about these mice. Uncle Dan and Aunt Katherine (we call her Dan’s Katherine, since Dan’s sister’s name was also Katherine) had 3 boys; Scott, Bruce and Bryan. Scott was closest to my age.

Apparently Uncle Dan took the mice rejects (most had tumors on their bodies) and threw them out in a field behind his barn. I guess he was so tendered hearted that he couldn’t or wouldn’t kill them.

Well, one day, Scott and I were out back hunting with our BB guns. We were shooting every can, post or ant pile in sight. We can upon the mound were the mice rejects lived. They were everywhere. Little white mice with tumors running all around. It was to much temptation for two little boys. We started to take our revenge on those mice. They were running everywhere while we started shooting BB's at them and hitting those mice with rocks and the ends of our BB guns. We were going to town on those mice, romping and yelling with every little defenseless mouse that we attacked. We were winning the war against some evil force until Uncle Dan showed up. He was mad. He made us go back to the house and he told us how wrong we were to kill those mice.

Today, I am not proud of what we did, but I sure remember it. I’ll have more stories later about my Uncle Dan, The Mouse Man. He’s really a good guy unless you are playing 42 against him and then he is just ruthless.

I came across this video and realized what the White Mice were used for. Herding Elephants. Watch.