The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3008 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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After Danielle’s tantrum and my calm but firm response, she settled down to a sulk of attrition which she gave up as everybody just ignored it. A sulk is designed to cause a reaction so if it doesn’t get one it tends to be a waste of energy. What really changed things was when I took the older girls out to get new bikinis, Danielle certainly needed something to cover her chest which was burgeoning and little mounds were appearing on Hannah, Trish and Livvie as well. Meems hadn’t started sprouting yet but she needed something to swim in and she wanted a two piece as well.

Jacquie was home so I asked her to watch the younger two and the rest of us went off to town to get new swimsuits, including me. I preferred a one piece especially for swimming, but the girls led by Danielle talked me into trying a bikini which I must admit looked better on me than I thought it would.

Meems opted for a frilly pink thing which I suppose suited her, she is so girly, while Trish and Livvie went for matching designs in different colours, Trish went for blue while Livvie went for yellow. Hannah chose one in a sort of Union flag design while mine was purple flowers on a grey background—it looked better than my description, fitting where it touched, as they say.

We stocked up on sun filter cream, I bought everyone a small bottle and it was everyone’s responsibility to make sure we all used it. Being fair skinned, my own was factor 50, the others got factor 30 in a waterproof version which was supposed to last several hours per application providing you put on the first two coats of it within twenty minutes of each other. So about ten coats less than Danni uses of mascara. After a few more bits and pieces and we popped round to the university to see the dormice, which were breeding like mad. Obviously, we can’t have full size trees inside a building, but we do have some smaller ones or bushes, with nest boxes attached or attached to posts all around the enclosure, which has glass sides and is like a giant greenhouse in which we can control the temperature and humidity.

As dormice like to make nests, we supply them with honeysuckle and grass with bushes of hazel, birch and buckthorn. Smaller hawthorn bushes with wayfaring tree bring up the rest of the vegetation although we do have grasses and even bluebells underneath them. It’s amazing what you can grow in a five metre squared greenhouse. There is also a small water feature to maintain humidity and provide them with somewhere to drink should they need it. We do vary the vegetation a little as not everything enjoys being kept in tubs to restrict size.

While there are natural food sources available in there at times including the flowers and fruit of the shrubs, we also give them prepared insects, dried fruit and nuts. We get through a kilo of nuts a week, mostly hazel which we supplement with chunky peanut butter, which they love but is not cheap. One of our technicians suggested it and we buy a jar every ten days well a case every couple of months during the summer.

The whole place is computer controlled which is why it cost so much money but then we do have a reasonable productivity in terms of the numbers of dormice we produce to resettle in the wild. We also have facilities to film them and even thermal imaging facilities to find any missing ones. We do checks of numbers on a daily basis, the computer counting them for us and also alerting us if any appear to be missing or any of the trap doors are not closed properly.

The nest boxes all have fibre optics and also weighing devices so it’s possible to work out how many occupants are in any of the boxes. For hibernation we transfer the nests they build to individual cages and they’re all computer controlled as well which was what went wrong a few years ago and we lost several dormice. The major advantage we have over the real world is that any dormice that do wake up prematurely can be fed to bulk up fat stores and then allowed to return to the land of nod.

I designed it and we employed a company to produce software to do all the things I mentioned, we can put on lights to give an effective sunrise or prolong day length if we want to play about with the hibernation cycles. It was my intention to do a study on such things myself but never had enough time nor did I find anyone who was interested in running the experiment for me. Possibly one day...

So here we are with the most sophisticated piece of kit in terms of captive breeding of native species, possibly producing more offspring than most other centres but still not using it to its full potential.

All the technicians are trained to run the basic programs and make sure the dormice are safe but I do keep an eye on things because it really is my baby having conceived and then developed the idea submitted the tenders and lobbied the university to invest in it and with Tom’s help got the funding. The bank has helped since with odd small grant to carry out repairs or update software and Sammi has helped as well. In fact I’d love her to redo the software but she’s so busy with the bank which pays her more than we ever could.

In some ways I feel I have to try and stay in the post here for a bit longer because I fear if I go, the dormouse program will go as well, even though it attracts half the students we have applying, especially the female ones because the object of their attention and affection is very cute, non aggressive and interesting to study. It’s also protected in the wild and those students who wish to call themselves ecologists later will need their own licences and our surveys in the wild help to generate the skills they need to apply for licences in dormouse wrestling. I think we’ve only ever had one licence refused and that was for someone who unbeknownst to us had a conviction for animal cruelty. How natural England found out, I have no idea, but we suspect someone else from the university dobbed them in. He didn’t declare the conviction and Natural England didn’t grant the licence.

The girls enjoyed watching the dormice with the technician, Sally, showing them some of the facilities we have that I described earlier. While they were amused I ran up to my office and signed a few letters and gave Diane instructions for a few more items she could deal with. It struck me as ironic that while the students were away, things could run quite smoothly with me only being there a few hours a week, providing Diane was there full time. Perhaps it’s just a tribute to my management skills or simply that of having a competent secretary. I’ll let history decide.