The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3069 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 saw Danielle up to her room and reassured her again, kissed her goodnight and went to check the others. Trish and co were all awake and whispering to each other.

“Okay, you lot, what’s all this about, why aren’t you asleep?”

“Wew wowwied, Mummy, about Danni.”

“Well you don’t need to worry, that’s my job unless of course you’d like to do my job and I could have a night off.”

A chorus of, ‘No Mummy’ ensued so I told them to lie back and go to sleep.

“Tell us a story, Mummy,” was the response to that.

“Will you go to sleep if I do?”

They all agreed they would then Hannah said, “Mummy, Trish and Livvie keep saying their favourite story is about a dormouse that roared, will you tell us that one, please?”

Oh boy, why do they always pick up on the ones you’ve forgotten about? “If I do, I don’t want you interrupting me and telling me I got it wrong because this was a story I made up for you and as such didn’t memorise the details, so this might be different to its original form—understood?”

Once more I got a unanimous response in the affirmative—they all said yes—duh, why do I bother?

I sat on the floor between the beds facing the door. “Once upon a time in a woodland or forest not too far away lived a small colony of dormice. It was small because dormice rarely live in any great numbers and when they do it’s only because some of the females have babies at the same time and as they grow up they tend to migrate to establish their own territories and make their own nests somewhere anew.
“Now in this wood there lived other creatures, there were a group of badgers who lived in a sett on the woodland floor and industriously dug each day to expand their home under the ground—and before one of you smart alecks asks, no they weren’t in danger of being shot by living in a cull area. There were deer in the wood and in autumn you could see where they’d slept because the carpet of dead leaves had a big dent in it or had even been removed where they’d been damp and stuck to the poor animal, sort of adhered to the deer.” That got a chuckle.

“There were foxes and hedgehogs, and they seemed to live in reasonable harmony each going their own way searching for worms or juicy bugs to eat and up in the trees were the nests of numerous birds like blue tits and great tits, woodpeckers and flycatchers who flitted about the branches singing and feeding on the insects that were also numerous.

“Now also in that woodland were some wood mice and some yellownecks. Yellow necks are the largest of the wood mice and also the most aggressive but both types of woodmice will kill and eat torpid dormice or very young baby dormice. So will owls and kestrels and other birds of prey, especially the owls because dormice are nocturnal animals as are owls, although some owls, like little owls can also be active in hunting during the day,” I said padding out my story with wildlife facts as well as fictions while I desperately tried to remember how I finished it last time.

“Bank voles climb as well as wood mice and yellow necked mice but not as well as dormice who have specially adapted ankle joints so they can run down trees and branches as quickly as they run up them and this one evening, it was just as well that they could because Mrs Dormouse, a single mother with four babies was just sitting on the end of a branch eating elder berries when she looked down to her nest, which was a nursing one and therefore bigger and more robust than just an overnight nest, when she saw movement near the nest. It was a wood mouse and her babies would be asleep and thus easy prey for this opportunist rodent.

“Rushing back down the branch she leapt across to the holly tree where her nest was and scurried down the main trunk, snatching a leaf from the holly tree as she went. Then just as the wood mouse was sniffing at her nest she sat up on a nearby branch and jabbed the point of the holly leaf into his backside. He was so intent on his easy meal he didn’t see her coming so when his derriere was punctured by the prickly leaf, he squeaked loudly and jumped into the air falling on the ground at thirty two feet per second squared, assisted by gravity and air pressure all the way.”

They were all still awake, somehow this wasn’t boring enough. “Mrs Dormouse checked her nest, it was still intact and all her babies were still fast asleep, so she went back to her previous perch and munched a few more berries and the odd insect that crossed her path, one being a rather tasty moth, or it was once she disposed of the wings and the hairy body, this was followed by a caterpillar or two and finally some berries to finish the job. On the way back she grabbed a newly forming and therefore soft hazel nut to munch on while she fed her babies.

“As she skipped across to the holly tree again she gasped in horror as she spotted a large and mean looking yellow necked mouse moving towards her family, licking his lips as he crept forward. Now a yellow neck is quite a bit bigger and heavier than a dormouse and twice as mean as a cut snake, ask any dormouse surveyor who’s found one in a nest box after they’ve put their hand in...” I flinched a little, as I remembered how sharp the little bugger’s teeth were. “But Mrs Dormouse had no time to think about size ratios, her babies were in danger and it was her job to protect them as best she could.

“Standing directly above the salivating yellow neck she dropped her hazel nut hitting him on the rump. The surprise she’d hoped would dislodge him only made him turn around to see what had hit him. Realising it was now an all or nothing situation, she jumped off the branch and kicked at him with her hind legs while grabbing the branch with her front paws, which are shaped like little hands.

“This time the surprise of her attack and the fact that the yellow neck was half turned around on the branch made him lose his grip and he fell off landing with a thump on the leafy ground, where after brushing himself down he went in pursuit of an easier meal.

“Mrs Dormouse collected another hazel nut and ate it while her young fed from her milk then, while they curled up asleep again she sneaked off to get another nut as the previous one had been rather nice. She turned around and there scrambling in the direction of her nest in the holly tree was a weasel. This is the smallest of the badger family but despite its small size it is a ferocious predator and well able to catch and kill much bigger rabbits, so baby dormice or even an adult one would be a real stroll in the park.

“There was no way she could afford to confront the weasel, he’d kill her as quick as look as her and then have her babies for dessert, she needed to think about this, but quickly. Suddenly a plan came to mind and grasping the recently eaten hazel nut shell in her mouth she silently descended the holly tree and stealthily crept up behind the pint size predator. Then she held the empty shell in her front paws and growled as loudly as she could into it. The empty shell acted like an amplifier and made her sound like a much larger animal and the startled weasel gave a squeak, over balanced and landed with a thud on the woodland floor whereupon he spotted the yellow neck and they both raced away across the woodland, the one running for his life the other for his dinner.

“Crikey, said a male dormouse who’d watched the proceedings from the safety of a hole in a nearby tree, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a dormouse best a weasel by roaring at it.

“How would you do it then? Asked our heroine.

“I wouldn’t, no way would I mess with a weasel.

“And that dear children is the difference between a...” I glanced at them in the light shining in from the hallway and they were all asleep. Next time I’ll do my lecture on woodland ecology, that can send full size students to sleep, so these should be a doddle.