The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2998 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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I didn’t sleep well that night, I was too anxious about my research project. Even if we could discover everything there was to know about dormice in hibernation, I wasn’t sure it would achieve much other than a paper being published in Nature or one of the mammal journals. Whoopee doo! Okay so everyone listed as an author gets some kudos and mine would be greatest as the most senior academic, which doesn’t say much about equality in academia but I can only change one thing at a time. Two years wasn’t going to be long enough, I just knew it and that was when the funding ran out.

At one o’clock I gave up and went downstairs for a cuppa and think. The costing worried me, if we got it wrong, we’d be over budget and likely to get the whole thing stopped and my credibility would be shot. Thanks, Tom, you bastard.

With that he appeared yawning and scratching somewhere you don’t in polite company. “Whit 're ye daein’ up?” he yawned again.

“Couldn’t sleep—tea?” He nodded and I poured him a cup.

“Why? Couldnae ye sleep?”

“If you must know my head has been spinning ever since you asked me to lead the hibernation project.”

He frowned. “Ye dinnae hae tae dae it a’ by yersel’.”

“I’m well aware of that, but we only have two years to set up all sorts of technology within our budget and analyse the results before publishing, plus it’s going to kill several animals.”

“Ye canna mak’ omelettes wi’oot breakin’ eggs. In thae lang run it may save many o’ them.”

“So you said at our meeting, and I wasn’t convinced then.”

He shrugged and sipped his tea. “A braw cuppa,” he said lifting the mug. Putting it down on the table he looked sharply at me, “Ye’ve thae potential tae be a guid scientist but temerity or uncertainty seem tae stop ye. Ye’re also afraid o’ laboratory work, I dinnae ken why, ye did some guid stuff at Sussex. An’ ye’re tae sentimental.”

“I’m not, I just don’t believe in saving things by killing them. Sounds like the Inquisition, saving your soul by burning you alive.”

“Dormice are endangered?”

“You know they are, in this country.”

“Sae hoo can ye best help them?”

“Prevention of habitat loss, encouraging farmers to plant hedgerows, education and improved public awareness.”

“Education—disnae that involve knowledge and disnae that involve research? Or hae I been gettin’ it wrang f’ thirty years?”

“All right, I accept what you’re saying but I don’t have to like it.”

“Cathy, ye’re a wife an’ mither tae many, ye’re a very guid teacher, but ye’re no a professor until ye grow up.”

I looked at him in astonishment and was about to splutter a protest when he said, “Ye’ve done things much worse than this. Ye changed yer gender—a thing fu’ o’ risk; ye adopted bairns and youngsters a’ wi’ problems—wi’oot sae much as a blink; ye fought off thae Russian Mafia—this should be a stroll in thae park f’ ye. If ye weren’t capable dae ye honestly think I’d hae let ye dae it? Ma reputation is greater than yers. D’ye think I’d risk that sae ye could prove ye were capable o’ being a professor legitimately?”

I looked him straight in the eye, “Daddy, you’d risk anything for me as I would for you. I’ll do your stupid project and make it work.” I kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the kitchen.

“I ken’t ye would,” he chuckled. I sighed as I went up the stairs, he’d played me like a fiddle—old bugger. Simon was playing Rule Britannia on the snoozaphone but he turned over as I got into bed and I finally slept.

I was sitting in my lab feeding nuts to Spike. “I promised I’d never hurt you, poppet,” I said to her then with tears in my eyes I said, “but I may have to, and to some of your babies as well.”

She stopped washing and looked at me and said, “I’ve had a good life.”

“You can talk?” I gasped in astonishment.

“Yes, of course I can, only you’re usually too busy to listen.”

I sat there with my mouth wide open.

“Close your mouth, you’re dribbling,” she said, adding, “humans are no worse than weasels or woodmice who kill us regularly, except in scale. I know you’ve worked hard to protect us dormice but the average winter will kill more of us than you ever will in your laboratory and there’s a chance you might actually find something which helps us all. We won’t take it personally and you will kill us humanely, won’t you?”

I nodded.

“Thanks for the nuts,” she said before running up my arm and then down my shirt into my bra where she nestled. “Night night,” she said and went to sleep.

Waking up through pressure on my bladder I reflected on my bizarre dream as I went to the loo. The dormice will never understand anything like this, so my dream was a nonsense of me trying to salve my conscience. Washing my hands the sound of the water gurgling down the plughole seemed to form words, ‘Don’t mock what you don’t understand, Catherine, things are as we wish them to be. Continue your quest and one day you will see what you need to see and know what you need to know.’

I looked hard at myself in the mirror—was I going completely bonkers or what? The walk back to bed was on autopilot. Was I now audio hallucinating? I yawned and sleep reclaimed me until I felt someone poking me, “I want breakfast, Mummy,” it was Cate and it was seven o’clock on a Saturday morning.

“Okay, sweetheart,” I slipped out of bed and switched off the alarm on the clock radio, Simon might as well have a lie in even if I couldn’t. I held her hand as we went down the stairs together and I looked down at her as we went. She was the greatest gift I could ever have, she and Lizzie, who’d not really known another mother. I did keep my promise and try to explain to them their own mothers had died and they’d been given to me for safe keeping. They didn’t really care, not yet at any rate, they had grown-ups who fed and watered them and gave them love—what more d’you need?