The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 32424 by Angharad Copyright© 2019 Angharad

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The weekend proved to be a bit tense, or perhaps it was just me who was, as the girls annoyed me to distraction and Simon's snoring kept me awake half the night. Jason had sent a whole pile of stuff through by email, in fact he'd had to compress it and it took me a few minutes to remember how to unzip it.

At breakfast I blew up big time and made Trish burst into tears. It was really a storm in a teacup but she'd pushed my buttons, like she does, and I'd successfully launched. Simon gave me a quick talking to, which left me in tears running to hide in my study, while he went off to calm Trish down, although Livvie had already gone to comfort her sister.

Seated in my office I stared at the photo of Danni in her England strip, her proudest moment. Mine was when the FA got funny with her as there'd been another attempt in a tabloid to bring up her past and the powers that be, in an act of great cowardice, suggested she drop out of the international scene for a while. It meant she'd miss the women's world cup and I expected her to be either suicidal or homicidal over it. She wasn't.

Si and I waited for the other shoe to drop and it didn't. When I spoke to her about it a couple of weeks later she told me that she'd proved her point, and when England didn't get to the final, she quietly said, "If they'd played me, they'd have got there and won it."

I beamed at her and told her she was probably right. "Of course I'm right, but that's their loss."

"You seem very calm about it?" I said hoping it wouldn't upset her and provoke the emotions which I was sure were boiling underneath her sedate exterior.

"Mum, ever since I started playing women's soccer I expected it to happen, which it did and we got over it, but I was always dreading the next time. I decided ages ago that when it did, I would quit football."

"But it's your life," I said very taken aback by her maturity.

"No, Mum, you and Dad and my sisters are my life. You've always been there for me, all of you and that is much more important than a short life as a pro athlete. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on my GCSEs and get decent A-levels, so I can go to university and get a job I want to do for the rest of my life, which football would not have done."

I was astonished by this teenager showing such maturity and so proud of her. I told her I would do all I could to help her achieve her goal and that I actually felt she was making the right decision. We had a little cuddle and she went off for a walk while I stayed in my study and sniffed, just like I was now.

Simon came in with Trish and we hugged and sniffed together. "Can't you go and torment some dormice or something?" he said tersely.

"That would be nice, can I come too, Mummy?" Trish sniffed clinging on to me.

"I suppose I could give Paul a ring and see if there's anywhere he's short of surveyors."

"Here," said Simon handing me the phone and leaving the room.

Paul Green runs all the dormouse surveys for the local wildlife trust and I helped him get his licence and set up the system they use. I thought it was better than talking with the university dormouse team, which again I set up several years ago but now am several levels higher up the food chain, too many in fact, so I have little if any contact with them these days. It was something I'd change if ever I left the university.

"Cathy, how lovely to hear from you," which was code for what do you want?"

"I have an urge to see a few dormice."

"What now?"

"Actually, yes." I began to think this might be harder than I first considered.

"You still have a licence?"

"Yes, of course I do." That is more precious than almost any other official piece of paper, only it isn't one piece it's about six pages of A4 telling you what you can't do, rather than what you can--Natural England have a strange way of doing things.

"In that case, I do have a site that we've rather neglected if you're interested."

"Neglected?"

"Yeah, we've had no one look at it for at least a year."

"Boxes or tubes?"

"Some of each."

"Okay, where is it?"

He gave me directions and I knew pretty well where it was. He assured me that all of the tubes and next boxes were marked with biodegradable tape, which was the system I helped him set up. It was red, the tape, that is, which should be okay unless you're red-green colour blind or suffer from deuteranopia, which is sexed linked and found in 6% of males.

An hour later, Danni, Trish, Livvie and I were changed and off in the car to find Hangman's Wood. With Trish doing the directions, instead of Danni, it only took us twice as long as it should have to get there but we did eventually roll up and park behind an old Land Rover.

"If I do ecology, will you get me an old Landie, like that?" asked Danni as I shut off the engine.

"Ugh," said Livvie, "I'd much prefer a Range Rover if I had to drive a four wheeled wotsit."

"I thought you wanted a Porsche, Dan?" queried Trish of her older sister.

"Yeah, that was when I was playing soccer, I've grown up a bit since and a Landie is more utilitarian."

"Always get a Cayenne," suggested Livvie.

"Mum had one of those, nah, I fancy a Landie."

It would be cheaper than the Porsche except to the environment if it spewed as much in the way of black smoke as Tom's old one had done. What did he call it? Aggie I think.

I checked we had all the stuff we'd need, including a notebook and pencil, a small bag for weighing any dormice we caught, plus a big bag for using to get them out of the boxes or tubes, my 50g spring balance, some hand-wipes, some spare wire and wire cutters, a pair of secateurs and a camera. I also carry a multitool thing which is like a large scale Swiss Army knife and all the girls had a bottle of water and an old sock to use as a bung to prevent escapees as we examined the boxes or tubes.

As we wandered into the woodland I felt the tension, which had built up over the past few days, evaporating and I was assailed with a sense of nostalgia--yeah I know, there's no future in it--but it felt like old times, times when life was simpler and full of dormice, the world's most wonderful rodent.

I'd trained the girls sufficiently to know to keep quiet while in woodland because you see and hear more things, like bird song and the singers, or occasional small mammals and even the odd larger one. As we walked we listened to a robin's melancholy trill and the rather tuneless call of a chaffinch plus the sound of digging.

Digging is not a sound you expect to hear on a Sunday in a nature reserve. It was definitely the sound of a spade cutting soil. I motioned the girls to hide and I crept forward to see what was happening. About fifty yards deeper into the woods were three men and two of them were digging and by the look of it, the holes they were standing in weren't the first as there were half a dozen others littering the area around them.

"I tell you there's none 'ere," said one of the rather red faced excavators.

"They's gorra be, keep diggin'," said the man who appeared to be in charge.

I crept back to the girls and motioned them to retreat back to the car. Once there I called Paul while Trish photographed the Land Rover.

"Finished already?" He said answering the phone.

"Uh not quite, we haven't started yet."

"So why the call?"

"Paul, is there any reason why a group of men should be digging up your reserve?"

He laughed then realised I wasn't. "Digging up the reserve?"

"Yes, there are three men with spades digging holes." As I spoke a rather large dog in the LandRover began to bark at us.

"Have they got dogs?"

"There's one in the car which we presume is theirs."

The penny dropped just as he said, "Badger diggers. Get away, Cathy, I'm calling the police."

Badger digging is an illegal pastime of sadistic miscreants, where any badger caught is put up against a fighting dog, often after being handicapped by having it's jaw broken or one of its legs. These people really are nasty with a capital F. No self respecting dog will corner a badger, it has one of the most powerful bites for its size in the natural world and the black and white stripes are a warning sign to keep away.

However, as I said above, there are people who enjoy pitting their dogs against wild life, often taking cats for the dogs to kill as a warm up--these people really are horrible.

Back inside the car we pulled back up the track and under some trees and waited. Some forty minutes later a convoy of police cars and one from the wildlife trust poured onto the track and pulled up right behind the Land Rover. I slipped out of my car and explained what we'd seen. One of the coppers knew the car and the dog and mentioned a name, there were a few nods. I was asked to leave the area to protect the children from being involved or from seeing what might be ugly or distressing scenes. I agreed and although two of the three were disgusted not to see the action, I drove us home via cafe where they do rather nice ice creams and honour was satisfied.

"D'you think we saved any badgers, Mum?" asked Danni.

"I have no idea, but if they go down for a bit, we may have saved several plus some dogs from horrendous injuries."

"Like what?"

"A badger can bite the face off a dog," I said gravely.

"Yuck, are all men bastards?" she asked.

"Of course not, but neither are they all as nice as Daddy or Gramps."

"Or all ladies as nice as you, Mummy," chucked in Trish who then trotted off chuckling to herself.

"Why didn't they do it at night?" asked Livvie, "No one would see them then?"

"They may have been looking to run the fight tonight."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."

"You're back early," said Simon laying down The Observer.

"It was like this..." I began.