The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3064 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I left about four thirty, remembering I had to change into my cycling gear before going home. It wasn’t difficult to remember as I or Diane had been falling over the bike in my office all morning, so it was a fairly powerful aide-mémoire.

It was quite a pleasant afternoon although I saw bits on the net that suggested we were in for a cold winter. Seeing as they can’t get it right on the same day, I’ll wait and see. If we have snow, and that’s pretty remote, I’ll go in with Tom in his Land Rover, it’s a Freelander but still has four wheel drive and would probably cope in Portsmouth and Southsea, which is pretty flat.

I was musing on the prospect of colder weather when the car in front of me braked hard to avoid some kid who’d run out into the road and I very nearly ran into the back of him. The car not the kid, only managing by a split second to get my foot down before I came off. It wouldn’t have been the first time and probably not the last, but it tends to hurt more the older you get and I wanted neither broken bones nor road rash.

It had gone quiet on the film front, so tomorrow I’d send Hancock an email asking how things were progressing. It wasn’t something I anticipated with pleasure as he could get quite nasty and I was close to telling him to forget it, if he was unpleasant again.

When I got home and spoke to the children after showering, they told me that once they’d got back from my office, after a nice lunch of cottage pie, Liz made them watch my dormouse DVD and then asked them about dormice. They tolerated it rather than enjoyed it, especially the old hands like, Trish who’d been dormouse handling for five years.

When they grumbled it was like being in school, I pointed out it wasn’t because they knew things about dormice that Liz wouldn’t, so effectively they knew more than the teacher.

“That happens all the time at school with Trish,” complained Livvie, which tended to show that Trish was still a superior monster who could and did, throw her weight about. If I made her aware of it, she may get worse or feel murderous toward her sister. It’s also hear say, which isn’t submissible in a court of law, so why should I adopt lower standards? Okay, so I’m a pompous old fart...

Trish was more interested in trying to guarantee Liz would have a dormouse or two to see or touch on Thursday, which I found very gratifying and showed her continuing maturity. Had she been watching Danielle in action?

Thursday finally arrived and I dressed in my dormousing gear, some old jeans, a polo shirt and a waistcoat which I suspect was designed for shooting but it had loads of pockets in which I had things like a notebook, magnifying lens, a pen and my scales. The latter are a bit bigger than a pen and contain a small spring which will weigh up to about fifty grams. The biggest dormouse I’d handled was just over thirty grams and that was a real porker, usually the adults are between about fifteen and twenty five grams. Any less than this and they may not make it through the winter.

One of the suspected causes for the decline in dormice in recent years is the mild wet winters. They may save on the heating bills but it’s thought that dormice wake up and find there’s no food, so they attempt hibernation again and possibly don’t wake up when spring and the warmer weather arrives.

Coming out of hibernation involves bringing the metabolism back to working rates and temperatures and that involves lots of energy which is usually stored as fat. Even in spring, if we have a late or cold one, there may be too little food for dormice to eat, which always worries me somewhat. If the flower buds are late on some of the trees and shrubs, there will be some very hungry dormice about and if they don’t have much in the way of reserves of fat, it could prove fatal. Statistically, it’s been estimated that up to two thirds of dormice don’t survive hibernation, confirming that hibernation is a very costly business but one way of surviving winter.

Liz arrived carrying her wellingtons in a plastic bag, Trish decided to wear hers as well not carry them. I told her to take a bag and some shoes to change into if it got muddy. She muttered as she went to comply but I let it go. Liz snorted. “Is she always like that?” I nodded as a response and she snorted some more.

Danielle had trainers on and carried her boots with her. Livvie decided she didn’t want to photograph dormice today, she’d play Jacquie up instead. Hannah, decided not to come at the last minute because it looked overcast.

It stayed cloudy most of the day and the cooler temperatures meant that some dormice were already into their hibernation. We did eventually find a semi-torpid one, so Trish took a photo for Liz or her holding onto this poor little critter which was blinking like mad at being disturbed but made no effort to escape. It weighed in at over twenty grams so might make it. We popped it back in the box, or Liz did and I put the box back on the tree.

An hour later we’d finished our section of the survey. We’d checked seventy boxes and found three mice altogether, plus four more boxes with dormouse nests in them, and two wood mouse nests. Thankfully for all concerned there were no wood mice about as they can bite, thought yellow necked mice bite even more and are that much bigger—so you don’t want to find one of those at home.

The dormouse nest has structure and is built with things like honeysuckle bark though I’ve seen them formed from grass or even bluebell stalks, depending upon what is available. They also usually have some green leaves of some sort which are a bit of a giveaway when you first open the box. It’s thought they do that to retain moisture in the nest, though I’m not entirely convinced as they usually have them on the outside of the nest where any evaporation would be away from any benefit to the dormouse, so it might be more linked to camouflage in nests built in the open, such as in hedgerows as opposed to those in holes in trees or our nest boxes.

By comparison, the wood mouse builds a nest by collecting a pile of old leaves from the woodland floor and that’s it, a pile of dead leaves. They will however, occupy old dormouse nests as well and dormice will occupy nests built by another and research in Belgium has shown they go nest hopping nearly as much as the characters do in the average soap opera.

Liz was absolutely delighted to have handled a genuine wild dormouse and found it was too sleepy to run away. She was lucky, I’ve done surveys where the only one we saw was legging it up a tree where it sat glaring at us for disturbing it. The experience reminded me we needed to approach them quietly. See you’re never too old to learn.