and the rats of Little Rock

Driving into Little Rock, these are the first things you see: road signs for Little Rock Air Force Base, billboards encrusted in glittering diamonds, advertising engagement rings of the weight that truly signal commitment, or at least 10-year payment plans; and a 1st Pentecostal Church so large it seems to have sucked the 2nd and 3rd churches into it's footprint.

My sister works as a technician at a local research site, where she runs tests on the Ts65Dn mouse, whose 16th chromosome resembles mutations found on the 21st chromosome of an individual with Down Syndrome. The research she assists with has found that what is generally viewed as a lack of work memory in those with Down Syndrome may actually be a delay in learning: The Ts65Dn mice demonstrate an increased ability to execute trials after ongoing and repeated practice.

One of the trials she runs take place in 12 x 12 boxes; the mice are trained to activate one of three NPH (nose-poke holes—perhaps the most delightful acronym I have encountered) after hearing its affiliated tone.

It costs approximately $100 to purchase and train a set of Ts65DN mice. They are housed in a quarantined section of the research site, and fed pellets according to their trial schedule (they’re kept at 80-85 percent of their body weight, in order to incentivize them to complete the trials, which reward them with drops of milk.) My sister pulls out a “mouse pie” from the cupboard, which is a plastic round sectioned into 12 spaces, for moving mice from their cages to the trial boxes. “I just transfer mice, that’s all I do,” says my sister. She prefers working with the rats, who are less inclined to bite and run away, even though both species are the culprit of workplace oddities such as having a tail swung into one's mouth during a transfer.

The Ts65Dn mice are housed in the same room as those undergoing methamphetamine tests. “Why is meth appealing?” asks one of the posters in the lab. “It’s intensely rewarding…for awhile.” The meth mice are underweight and visibly agitated; they gnaw on the metal bars of the cage and look generally crazed. My sister isn’t supposed to publicize the fact that she works on animal trials. Occasionally someone from PETA or another animal rights organization organizes a protest or applies for a job in an attempt to expose what they view as cruel research methods. “Mice have saved more people than #911,” reads a poster in my sister’s office. “They’ve been involved in most every important medical discovery in this century.” (I believe this was referring to the last century.)

Over half a century later, Little Rock Central High School is still as beautiful and formidable as it must have appeared to the Little Rock Nine. Their names are etched in benches surrounding a reflecting pool at the base of the stairs. My mother throws a penny into the water, and all is still except for the broadening ripples. If anything, the most seismic shift is the demographic somersault that occurred between 1950 and today: Little Rock Central lies south of I-630, in that part of the city that everyone has told my sister and her husband to avoid. This is the translation [you have to click on the image; the lighter the color, the greater the white flight]:

White flight 1960-2007

And then it was down to Houston, with a slight detour to Gurdon, Arkansas, after the Queen Mary stalled out on the highway, twice. Despite two cell phones and internet service, it took a desperate call to my father to send the tow truck in my direction, all of which was worth it when the tow truck driver climbed out of the cab and told me: “Our guy in the shop talked to your daddy.”

After a 20-minute tow and 5 minutes under the hood, they found the problem: The battery had shaken loose in the heat and southbound highways. “Who put in your battery?” they asked.

That would be my daddy.