The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2622 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 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 really enjoyed your programme on the harvest mouse,” said Delia as I entered the office.

“Thank you, you didn’t perchance tape it, did you?”

“I think it’s still on iPlayer.”

“Oh okay, I’ll try and look later, I haven’t seen what the BBC did to it.”

“You mean it isn’t as you submitted it to them?”

“No, they have the right to alter anything they show to meet with their standards and so on. It’s a coverall to enable them to meddle if they wish. None of it was controversial so they shouldn’t have needed to touch it, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t tweak it here and there. They did with Dormouse.”

“But you know more about mice than they do.”

“They know more about their audiences than I do, so unless they mess it about willy-nilly, I have to accept they have some idea of what they’re about. They’ve been doing it longer than I have after all.”

“Anyway, I really liked it, are you going to wear those shorts to work in the summer?”

“I think it’s unlikely,” I blushed and she smirked. It was the same pair I wore in making Dormouse, so I thought it gave consistency plus both Erin and Alan insisted I wore them to keep my audience happy—mostly middle-aged men with daughters my age. I don’t usually wear eye makeup when doing fieldwork but did for the film, so one has to adapt to the medium being used.

Bringing me a cup of tea she asked how Simon and Sammi were and I was able to report that both were well on the mend and hopefully going back to work next week. After the short break while we drank tea, ate a biscuit or two and discussed the paperwork she’d received, I plunged into the pile on my desk and by lunchtime had reduced it to just one or two items about which I needed to speak with Daddy as I wasn’t involved in their origins and knew nothing about them.

We were as yet without a new Vice Chancellor and Delia told me that according to the bush telegraph I was seen as a king maker as well as causing the vacation of the previous incumbent, which was untrue; illness had caused Gascoyne to resign not pressure from me—though if that happened I might well have tried to force his hand.

I had caused ructions on the council of the university which was effectively its management board and behind the scenes had managed to get Tom to take the chairman’s job, he agreed if I was prepared to be secretary. I declined but said I was prepared to act as Vice Chair as I was too busy to take anything other than a supporting role. He pointed out that I’d almost singlehandedly overthrown the previous council. I simply told him that I wouldn’t do so again if he didn’t annoy me.

Lunch time I sat watching Harvest Mouse on BBC iPlayer while eating a tuna baguette Delia had fetched for me from the refectory. Then deciding that the Beeb hadn’t done anything radical to my film I went for a brisk ten minute walk around the campus—it’s so easy just to sit at a desk and get no exercise whatsoever, that I felt I needed to get some fresh air and stretch my legs for a few minutes.

While wandering I popped in to say hello to Pippa then had to almost run back to my office to take some calls from a couple of universities regarding the data from the survey.

Before the proverbial had hit the atmospheric oscillator I’d engaged two people to input data from the survey onto one computer programme. They had reams of the stuff. The object was to enable our contributors to access the who survey data but it was currently members only to protect the database.

A university in Paris was doing something similar to us compiling the French data but we were all interlinked to enable oversight by each of the twenty odd countries involved to ensure consistency. The British data was the largest so far collected and they were all using my system of collection and analysis, there was also an agreed opportunity for each member country to then use the data as it required and also to be able to compare it with other countries or the total to produce statistics about future conservation as necessary. At least that was the intention.

A badger charity called me to request data on badger populations, which I was unable to give them because we didn’t collect numbers, it would need to be guessed from distribution figures which was what we were collecting. I’d already spoken out against the recent badger cull, as had many scientists, some with better qualifications than I had re badgers. I’m a mammal ecologist by inclination and training so can claim some authority on mammals and I hoped I was listened to with respect—except by government, but as they didn’t want to annoy one of the banks that loaned them money in quite large quantities, and with which I had some influence, they tended to leave me alone or tolerate my grumbles about lack of protection for different species.

The problem with things like dormice and harvest mice is the destruction of habitat by human activity such as farming. I’m happy for farmers to make a reasonable living but that should include a respect for the land and its inhabitants. Sadly, as small farms become less viable and the agribusiness buys them out, out come the hedgerows and woodland—unless they do shooting of pheasants, in which case bits of woodland are left for them to roost in. We need to educate farmers that things like water voles, harvest mice, dormice and several other species are indicators of how healthy their land is, which could well be a selling feature of crops they produce. We also need an environmental body which has the teeth to bite offenders who damage SSSIs deliberately and which rewards those who encourage wildlife.

Wild deer in the UK vary depending upon where you are, but I’m sure there are thousands of people living in cities who’ve never seen a wild one except on film. I’m grateful that I’ve seen red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, sika deer and Reeves muntjac, in fact it’s only Chinese water deer that I haven’t seen of the six species we have in the UK of which only red and roe deer are actually native. The Deer Society have been of inestimable use in helping us survey deer species and they did their own one a few years ago.

“Are your children back in school?” asked Delia as I cleared the last bit of paperwork.

“Yes, why?”

“You have ten minutes to go and collect them.”

I looked at my watch and gasped. She was absolutely right. I switched off my laptop and shoved it in my bag, grabbed my handbag and jacket, and thanking her for reminding me, rushed off to collect a cart load of monkeys from St Claire’s.