The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2976 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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248 dozen for dodecaphiles

Thinking about butterfly surveys got me thinking about how I used to do them when I was a kid, well teenager. I joined the young ornithologists and through them got used to doing surveys on a local reserve, so using their format I started my own on some waste ground about half a mile from home.

Despite wearing army surplus camouflage trousers and vest, with my long hair and shaven arm pits I probably looked more girl than boy. My hair would be tied back in a scrunchy and after Murray made me do it with a high ponytail like girls do, I used to do it that way most of the time which saved me agro from him and also annoyed my dad, who couldn’t say anything once I told him Murray had insisted I do it that way.

The best time to do surveys is in sunlight because the butterflies are more active and easier to see, but it also sometimes needs a butterfly net to identify them; some of the blues and fritillaries can be fiddly unless you see the underside of their wings. If you’re careful, they can be identified and released without harm. Binoculars and a butterfly net were about all the professional stuff I had.

Getting the camouflage trousers was an interesting experience. There was a shop in town which did all sorts of army surplus plus some cheap copies for fishermen and shooters. I was sixteen and my hair was below shoulder length and with my small waist and disproportionately broad bum, was wearing plain, girls’ jeans—the jeans were plain, perhaps the girl was too—so when I was asked at the shop—in my tee shirt, jeans and ponytail—what size I was, I was sold women’s ex army surplus pants. They fitted quite well and because I was doing my own laundry, my mother didn’t appear to realise what I was doing. I found out later that she did but she chose not to say anything. My dad would have gone bananas had he realised, especially as he paid for them, thinking I was doing something with other boys.

I wasn’t, because when I introduced myself as Charlie when I first joined the group, with my long hair and shyness they thought I was a girl called Charley, so I was put in the girl’s group and didn’t complain because it would have embarrassed everyone and I was just so glad no one from my school was involved who might have recognised me. I was also fair skinned so used to plaster on sun block and use lip balm—a coloured one, which looked like lipstick.

I did the butterfly surveys for two years with the YOC and a year on my own when they decided to build on my survey site. Instead I turned to mapping dead hedgehogs, which while somewhat ghoulish for a teenage girl, provided useful data on their distribution and got me interested in mammals. It also taught me the discipline of recording data and doing simple analyses of it. My hedgehog survey got me a prize with the YOC and a mention in their magazine which my parents never got to see but I decided that it was more important to me to be recorded as my true self than to share my moment of triumph with my parents. What I hadn’t realised was that the report of my survey was being used by Professor Herbert at Sussex to demonstrate that very little equipment was needed to set up a perfectly valid scientific survey.

Remember, when I first went to Sussex, my father had convinced me to get my hair cut, so it was just collar length, and although a bit girly, being cut at a women’s salon, was short enough for them not to connect the feminine boy who did hedgehog surveys around Brighton with the prize winning ‘girl’ from Bristol. I won a new pair of binoculars and a bird book.

On reflection, perhaps Herbert did join up the dots because he did write to Tom regarding me knowing that Tom had experience of transgender teens with his daughter. I kept most of it hidden, though I did still have my combat trousers when I started university because they fitted me rather well. With all the dormouse stuff in woodlands and various other field work I did, they finally wore out and when I went to get some more the shop had closed. From then on it was jeans and gaiters and the Barbour my mum bought me for my eighteenth birthday—I went and got it, she just paid for it. I don’t think she ever knew it was a ladies one. That got all sorts of abuse for over five years before it fell apart and I had to buy my own by which time I’d encountered Stella and was dressing as female all the time.

“Are you going to sign those letters or not?” demanded my secretary.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve been sat there in some sort of trance for the past ten minutes.”

“I was trying to remember something.”

“Like where you left your pen?” she could be quite sarcastic on occasions.

“Ha ha,” I picked up my fountain pen and signed the dozen letters and handed the file back to her.

“You can go back to sleep now, little dormouse.” She’ll have to go.

Life wasn’t entirely plain sailing in my covert girlhood because Murray found out about my survey and the report in the YOC magazine.
“Recognise this, Watts?” he said dropping a copy on his desk.

“It’s the Young Ornithologist Magazine, sir.”

“I know that, Watts, I can read too. What about page sixteen and the prize for young biologist of the year?”

I blushed. “I haven’t seen that, sir,” I lied.

He opened up the page and handed it to me. “This is you, isn’t it?”

“It says Charlotte Watts, sir, so it can’t be.”

“Watts, I’m not stupid, that is clearly you and if you weren’t such an effeminate disgrace, we could have used this to promote the school, instead like you we’ll have to hide it. Disgust doesn’t quite describe my feelings about you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Get out of my office, you unnatural creature.”

I turned and fled the battle smirking all the way back to my classroom. I felt that one point had been scored by the dissidents against the transphobic establishment. I suspect had my mother got to hear about the ways in which I was abused by that creep, she’d have done something about it. My father was much more of a sympathiser but I doubt even he would have tolerated all the things that happened to me at that school. I was so glad when I got to university and discovered they all had policies about ethnic and sexual minorities and no dress code. So I continued my covert cross dressing believing no one noticed but it turned out they all did and couldn’t care less and the same applied at Portsmouth. Freedom at last.