The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1371 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“See ya tomorrow,” said Matt as we both departed the hall we were using to rehearse.

“It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I’m otherwise committed tomorrow.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m doing other things tomorrow.”

“You can’t.”

“Who can’t–I can’t hack this all weekend as well as Monday to Friday.”

“So what are you doin’ that’s so damned important.”

“Taking my son somewhere.”

“Like where?”

“Mind your own business,” I huffed back at him.

“Pardon me for breathing,” he said affronted.

“I hope it’s something important to cancel all this,” he waved his arm around the room.

“My family are my universe–this is a diversion.” I pushed past him and climbed into the Porsche.

“English aristocrats,” he sneered at me.

“Scots, actually, hen,” I said in my Gruoch voice, slammed the door and drove off.

“Ah there ye are,” said Tom.

“Aye an’ whit of it?” I was still in character.

“Are ye taking thae piss, hen?”

“Dinna be sae daft, faither,” then I realised what I’d said. He was standing there gobsmacked which for someone who talks for a living, is quite an achievement. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m still in character.”

“Is that hoo ye’re daein’ Lady Macbeth?”

“Och, weel I thocht I’d use a wee gentle accent, like thae hi’landers dae, but it got a wee bittie mixed wi’ Lallans.”

“Aye, jest a wee bittie.” He laughed and we hugged and I kissed his cheek.

Jenny was away tonight, so I had to deal with the two littlies as well as the larger offspring. Simon had agreed to babysit tomorrow while Danny and I went hunting dormeece. It still meant I had to feed Catherine–who wanted to fall asleep at my breast–and Puddin’ who was playing up something chronic. Much more of this and I’ll post her to Stella in a large Jiffy bag.

We left home at just after eight, I’d been up since six to feed the two pests and sort out my equipment–not a lot, the requisite heavy duty clear plastic bag, and a smaller one for weighing any meeces we find. Then my little balance–a spring balance some call them, it’s like pen with a rule on it and a pointer and a clip thing on the bottom. It weighs in grams and we note the weight of any meece we catch in the nest boxes, and the nest box number–some seem more used than others. We have about hundred to check on two sites.

We will have a bit of help, half a dozen students–three of whom have licences to handle or disturb dormice. I put mine by my equipment–we’re supposed to carry them when working with the animals–it stops any argument.

We loaded the crate of stuff–I usually take some Longworth traps with me, for live trapping–we usually bait some with grain and few dried meal worms, shove a bit of hay or straw in the back and lay them when we start at the site, then check them before we go. I have a shrew licence as well as the dormouse one, which means we can actually catch them–though it’s usually by accident.

Shrews are tiny creatures but ferocious predators of insects, small vertebrates and earthworms. They are phenomenally active and need to eat every couple of hours–they eat most of their own weight each day–so they need to be busy. They’re smaller than mice and aren’t rodents.

So to catch them you need a licence–seems crazy given the ubiquity of the common shrew–cats kill them by the truckload–but some of the other ones are quite rare, including the Scilly shrew, which only occurs on the islands off Cornwall.

I digress, the law says we need a licence–so I have one–so we can trap them. When we do catch them it adds to our mapping of them, but they occur in most places including large gardens–we have loads of them at home in the field edges and the orchard.

With regard to trapping them, if you don’t bait the traps with things like meal worms or cat food, they could starve to death if the traps are left for more than a couple of hours–so we don’t leave them very long and we do leave food in them–thereby complying with the recommendations of the Mammal Society.

Moving on to this particular morning, we arrived at the first woodland site and I opened the gate–I have a key if you remember–and we drove down the path, parking about three or four hundred yards further on.

Then we sat and drank some coffee from my flask while we waited for the others. Only four arrived–two couldn’t make it for some reason–I’d be having words with them, as I was still supervising their field work/project work. However, we had four licence holders for dormeece, including me, and my solo for shrews.

We baited six Longworth traps and set them with bits of fluorescent tape tied to bushes next to them. After this we collected all the bits we’d need to carry out the survey and dumping them in my rucksack, we set off up into the woodland.

Danny was really pleased with himself as we established ourselves as three teams of two–he and I would be one of them. We agreed which sets of boxes we’d check and went off to do so.

I’ve probably described the boxes before–they’re like nest boxes for birds only you have the hole on the tree side of the box, as the dormouse will scramble up or down the tree to enter it. The lid is held on by a piece of wire, and the box is wired to the tree for easy removal.

To examine the box–you either block the hole with a piece of cloth, some herbiage or your hand–next, you open the lid and if you see movement you have something. If there’s nesting material inside you could have a dormouse or something else–occasionally birds nest in them–or it could be a woodmouse or even a weasel–both can bite, dormice rarely do and usually only after provocation like sticking microchips in them. They can also go into shock after that too–so I don’t actually like doing it. On the two sites we’re examining today, we don’t have any microchipped animals yet–it might happen later if we have the money, because it’s the best way of identifying them for all sorts of data.

Once you think you have an inhabitant in the box, you take it off the tree, still covering the hole and place the whole thing in the big bag. Then you take the lid off and poke around gently–you get to tell if there’s likely to be anything in it and dormice nests are unique because they take green leaves into the nest regularly to help maintain a moisture balance–clever eh? So see greenstuff in the nesting material–you’ve had a dormouse stay there at some point–see it’s not rocket science–but it does require common sense.

We found three dormice in the boxes we did–and Danny helped me weigh them–I actually did the handling–though I did promise if he came again–he could try handling them.

One of the students had a wood mouse in one of their boxes, they’re a damned nuisance–once they’ve been in a box, dormice won’t go near it again.

The second site was much as above–we had two more adult dormice which Danny weighed and we recorded. We’d probably tramped a couple of miles up and down the woodland–it’s on an incline with a quarry at one part–so you have to be careful.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked Danny as we drove home.

“Yeah–it was well kewl–better than football.”

Was that true or was it just said for my benefit? I smiled as we drove home.