The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2974 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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For the next two days I met with colleagues and discussed how we might scan dormice who were torpid. Certainly the same techniques used on humans wouldn’t work because they were too small or the electrodes too big. We discussed methods of thermal imaging but again they were too small to scan. There had to be a way to do this but none of us could think of it. I already had a post grad student researching the literature to see if the scanning of dormice or other similar sized species were written up in the literature. So far nothing, it was so frustrating.

I met Tom for lunch and he asked for a progress report—I didn’t have much to report other than we’d been working hard but to no avail. I asked him if he had any ideas, as he had worked with bats, back in the 1970s before I was born.

He explained they were doing work on tracking, especially Daubenton’s bat with radio transmitters on the back of the animals they chased after them on foot with receivers, which looked like square tennis racquets.

“I had visions of them with shaven heads and all these little probes either stuck into their brains or glued to their heads, like sort of hedgehog heads.”

He chuckled, “Ye’d probably get more response than frae thae heid o’ a first year student.”

Poor old first years, for some it takes a year for them to adjust to not being at home before they start to knuckle down and actually do something. If they aren’t actually sent down for poor performance—we don’t keep people on if they have no idea by the end of the first year as the next two build upon the first year’s work.

As I drove him back to the university, my phone peeped with a text but of course I couldn’t answer it while I was driving and I forgot about it when I got back to the office and Diane produced even more work for me to do. I’d always thought it was my job to find her work not the other way round, but I’m only a professor, what do I know? I knuckled down and did two hours of slog before leaving to collect the girls. It was only then that I remembered the text message.

Checking it had me puzzled for quite a few minutes. ‘N E chance U could give me sum advice re a n8ure reserve? Jan.’ Who the hell was Jan? I thought for a moment it was a wrong number text but nature reserves tend to indicate it could be for me.

I puzzled all the way home but still couldn’t think who Jan was and it’s so embarrassing to call someone and have to admit I had no idea who they were, but after changing into jeans and a tee shirt, I called the number that had sent the text only to get a generic voice mail. That threw me for a moment but I thought I’d apologise to a voicemail rather than a human.

As I was checking my personal emails my mobile began to chirrup—yeah Sammi switched it to the call of a yellowhammer, a bird like a small bunting whose call is reputed to sound like, ‘a little bit of bread and no chee—eese.’ I still remember it, so it must have been effective as a memory aid.

“Hello, Cathy Watts...” I offered into the BlackBerry.

“Hi Cathy, it’s Jan, Jan Simpson—you helped me get my masters two years ago.”

I blanked for a moment, my brain doing what psychologists call a trans-derivational search. Not sure if that means only trans people do them or what, but I had visions of my remaining brain cell flicking through a box of index cards trying to find one which would allow me to remember her.

“Jan Simpson?” I repeated to her.

“Yes, I did the masters in Ecology which I’d have failed until you helped me.”

“You did the dormouse nest box preference thing...” I think my neuron had found the correct card.

“Yes, with your assistance.”

“It was quite a good study if I remember correctly.”

“Only because you sorted it for me.”

I helped her write or rewrite the dissertation, the original draft was hopeless, yet she’d actually carried out some quite interesting research.

“I do remember it, we couldn’t decide if they preferred something bijou with a single bathroom or lace curtains and carpets.”

“Absolutely—we took some stick over that, didn’t we?” She tried covering the insides of the boxes with odd bits of carpet to insulate them. I proved the idea a waste of time by getting thermometer readings from both types of box—we eventually found it was where we sited the box that mattered not whether the box was carpeted or not.

It seemed to take forever to stop the silly giggling but finally we did and then she got to the nitty-gritty. “...Anyway, I’m doing some work for the Dorset Naturalist’s Trust and I could do with some advice...”

I quickly consulted my diary and decided I’d play hooky tomorrow and take a trip west instead. So the next morning I dressed in my fieldwork clothes—a green shirt with pockets, some camouflage trousers and my Barbour. I took the girls to school but arranged with Tom for him to collect them if I was late returning.

The place we were meeting was the Portland Heights Hotel coffee lounge at eleven, to give me a chance to get there. I had a vague recollection of where it was and after returning home for the Jaguar, collected my rucksack with binoculars, hand lens and wild flower guide, set off for Portland. The drive was uneventful and I made reasonable progress arriving fifteen minutes early, which gave me time to comb my hair and redo my ponytail.

We had coffee and a wee, then set off to the cars and parked them about a hundred yards beyond the hotel. Then a few steps later, we were at the nature reserve. It was immense. Lots of work had already been done removing cotoneaster and buddleia which invade the grassland and as they have a particular species of blue butterfly which is very rare, and a hawkbit that is found nowhere else but Portland, it appears the quarry is very important.

The big worry is invasive species of shrubs like the cotoneaster which reduce the grassland and subsequently the butterflies. We walked around the reserve and I offered comments though I admitted, limestone grassland is not my primary habitat interest, it was delightful to see and I don’t think I’d ever seen so much vipers bugloss in one place. Being an ex quarry there are hazards with steep cliffs and drops—it’s hard to think so much rock has been removed from one place.

A sort of alleyway in one part gave a shade from the sun and allowed a spurge to grow. I wasn’t sure if it was Portland spurge being a zoologist rather than a botanist but ivy broomrape was good to see as well as wild thyme and pyramidal orchids. Dingy and large skipper flitted here and there and a marbled white, looking newly emerged flew about in the grassy areas. I wouldn’t swap my woodlands for this but it was nice to explore a very different habitat and I waited to be asked for students to either survey the place or help with maintenance. Neither happened and I drove home wondering what all that was about but enjoying it immensely all the same.

Dingy skipper on vipers bugloss.

Ivy broomrape - a parasitic plant which feeds from the roots of ivy, notice it has no chlorophyll.