The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2557 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

---

Wednesday, another meeting with the finance people, they want to cut my budget, I threaten to resign and take the dormouse project and mammal survey with me. They think about calling my bluff until one of them remembers I’m married to one of the richest and most powerful families in the country. To up the ante, I told them the bank would withdraw the study centre and various other loans it has with the university.

“But that’s blackmail?”

“No it isn’t, I might have accepted that I was warming up my financial muscle and essentially, I could destroy much of this university in two phone calls. Other investors would think that there was something going on and withdraw as well. Within forty eight hours, you’d all be on the dole and the bank’s bailiffs would be taking possession of most of the campus. You’d be bankrupt within a week.”

“You’re trying to intimidate us,” squeaked the second finance officer.

“No, I’m simply reporting consequences if I left, naturally if I did go I might not prevent the bank seeking to renegotiate or rescind loans.”

“You were threatening us.”

“If I’d been threatening you, you’d have known it, don’t you worry. I was simply pointing out consequences.”

“I doubt the university council would see it that way.”

“Would you like me to ask them at the next meeting I attend?”

He gave me a look that would melt steel but not women, I was therefore unfazed by it.

“Why shouldn’t your department face cuts?”

“Because it brings in more revenue than any other in this faculty. If I leave, so will many of your students.”

“That’s preposterous, you think you can just ride roughshod over anyone’s life.”

“If that were true, I’d only have to make one phone call to deliver your name and address to the bank, like so.” I pressed speed dial on my Black Berry and they heard it dialling. “Then, by the time I’d finished, your house would be history as the bank would have withdrawn your mortgage and blacklisted you.”

They heard a voice answer the other end and capitulated. I cancelled the call to our doctor. They’d been double bluffed.

“My courses have twice as many students as most of the others, they therefore pay for themselves. I don’t expect to have to defend them against cuts again. Good day gentlemen.” They left immediately.

I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it and I also knew that Daddy would be less than pleased with me flexing my financial muscle, but I was sick of desk jockeys telling me what to do with regard to running a department. Before me I had a spreadsheet with all our outgoings on one side and our income on the other. We were in credit, my department paid for itself and also money to the university. Admittedly, that wouldn’t be the case without some generous grants from the bank and several other bequests, plus their share of the money made from my two films. The harvest mouse had been shown in Holland and Spain, Australia and a Canadian broadcaster was thinking about it having shown our dormouse film last year.

The BBC had bought the harvest mouse as well but weren’t showing it until Easter when I’ll get complaints from farmers about the public trampling corn fields looking for harvest mice. I hope they don’t find too many ticks, the public that is, especially with the increasing spread of Lyme disease or Lyme borreliosis. I was still pondering which would be worse, daddy’s wrath or Lyme disease when Delia buzzed me.

“There’s someone from local radio wants to you about grey squirrels.”

“Okay, put him through,” I said while my head was saying, I do dormice not squiggles. “Hello, Cathy Watts,” I replied to his cursory greeting.

“Is that doctor or professor Watts?”

“I’m a professor but also have a doctoral degree, will that do?”

“Course, look we’re doing a thing on grey squirrels and Defra’s intention to cull them.”

“Right, is that it?”

“Well I have some questions about squirrels and hoped you might answer them.”

“Is this being recorded?”

“No, I was hoping we could do it live.”

“What, now?”

“In about five minutes.”

“Don’t get too specific in detail like asking about weight and size. Everyone will have seen a grey, it’s reds they may or may not be familiar with.”

“No, that’s fine. You’re an expert on rodents?”

“Dormice yes, other species less so.”

“You made that film on the dormouse, didn’t you?”

“Yes, there’s one on the harvest mouse on the BBC over Easter.”

“Great. You wearing those shorts again?”

Why do they always ask about the shorts? “I can’t remember, long time since I saw it.” I am actually but he doesn’t need to know that.

“We’re going live...now. The government is intending to cull grey squirrels to attempt to reduce their numbers to help red squirrels compete and reduce damage to woodlands. I’m talking to Professor Cathy Watts from Portsmouth University who’s an expert on rodents and who made that delightful film about dormice last year. She’s done one on harvest mice which will be out on the BBC at Easter.

“Professor Watts, are you in favour of the cull?”

Try me with a hard one why don’t you? “Insofar as the grey squirrel is an alien, carries squirrel pox and does damage, they should perhaps have thought of doing it a hundred years ago.”

“So it’s not like the badger cull, which I believe you were against?”

“I was because none of the scientific data backed it up, in fact it looked as if most scientists were against the badger cull because it was likely to spread not reduce the spread of bovine TB. Squirrels are a different proposition entirely, and being smaller are more easily killed with shotguns, so you don’t need marksmen—though the badger cull made me wonder what the government’s definition of marksmen actually was.”

“They carry a disease, grey squirrels, that is?”

“Squirrel pox, which is endemic to them but which they seem to have a large degree of immunity. Alas red squirrels are susceptible and if they catch it, it’s almost always fatal. It causes infected ulceration which must be very painful for the poor reds.”

“Sounds horrible. You’ve been responsible for mapping the distribution of red squirrels, where’s the best place to see them?”

“Either up in the far north of England or over the border in Scotland, or on some islands like Brownsea, to which the greys haven’t spread.”

“And grey squirrels are bigger than red ones?”

“Yes, about half as big again, and they spend much more time on the ground than red squirrels.”

“Thank you, Professor Watts, from Portsmouth University. Don’t forget to watch her latest nature film on harvest mice over Easter. Feel free to email or text me about how you feel about this grey squirrel cull, are you for or agin it?

“Now, the next topic. We’ve had a UKIP and a Green party representative say they don’t agree with people having sex changes on the NHS and in a moment we’re going to speak with Miss Paris Lees, who’s an official spokeswoman for the transgender lobby...”

I was so glad they had Paris dealing with it rather than me. My heart was still pounding—what a coincidence of topics. Phew, that was close—too close.