The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3170 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 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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“Is it always like this?” asked Amy, one of our newbies.

“You mean when we’re not involved in terrorist plots, finding unicorns or saving the world—yeah, unless it’s raining,” said Dan.

“Unicorns, terrorists?” gasped Amy.

“I might have exaggerated about the terrorists,” smiled Dan.

“I don’t recall unicorns here for a while, Dan.” I chipped back.

“No we haven’t for a few months, now I come to think about it.”

“Is their blood silver like in Harry Potter?” asked Amy keeping her face straight.

“No idea, haven’t seen one bleed,” replied Dan, which was true he hadn’t neither had I. “You seen unicorn blood, Cathy?”

“Don’t think so, we’ve got quite a few samples of blood of different species both on slide and digital. Don’t remember any there but it is an extensive collection.”

“Well I did the digitisation of most of them and I don’t remember it, I mean, it would stand out somewhat if it was silver seeing as most is red being haemoglobin based.”

“Some insects use different pigments, copper or something if I remember correctly as do horseshoe crabs and isn’t there a skink which gets green blood from some sort of bile secretion?”

“Could be—this is why she’s a professor and I’m not,” said Dan loudly to our audience.

“Absolutely,” agreed Tim.

Blushing I asked Dan, “Are we having coffee or just having an embarrass Cathy competition?”

“Oops, got the boss here and I forget my hospitality—who’s for coffee...”

Dan went off to sort the drinks while Amy strolled up to me, “Is that true about the lizard—the green blood?”

“Yes, some sort of skink, but I don’t think we have any of that on file.”

“Or even in a vial,” punned Tim.

I rolled my eyes and Amy snorted. “Are all your field trips like this?”

“They have a habit of being distracted by unplanned events, though these days I don’t have time to lead many. Mind you the prayer meeting at the nature reserve wasn’t something I was aware of.”

“I think it was a picnic, Cathy,” prompted Tim.

“I was close,” I grumbled affectedly.

Amy snorted again. “I think it’s a pity you don’t lead more,” she said and our conversation was interrupted by Dan returning with a tray of coffees and some biscuits.

“That was good fun,” said Dan in between taking sips of coffee, “I don’t do enough fieldwork, too much computer stuff, not enough fresh air.”

I just shrugged at him, he had the choice to do more, he was just getting lazy.

“Some guy reckoned we have a pair of turtle doves nesting down the far side of the pond.”

“Nice,” I responded which was true if it was the case. Turtle doves have been declining for years but given that every clot with a gun on Malta can shoot himself a pair of them when they’re migrating might be a large part of the explanation. It always struck me as incongruent that the Maltese are lovely people except for their habit of shooting songbirds, which is shared by many Mediterranean countries. Seems that some people need to kill things for fun which I find distasteful. Even our current Prime Minister, she who triggered Article 50, has spoken of offering a free vote in the Commons on repealing the fox hunting ban, this despite something like 84% of the UK population disagreeing with her. However, destroying the economy and our status in the world seems a priority at present so she might be too busy for the next two hundred years.

I also saw something about Stephen Hawking, him of the motor neurone disease, who suggested that humans have a maximum of 100 years on earth before artificial intelligence becomes self developing and starts to act independently of humans. The thing is, will we be able to escape it in our driverless cars?

“If you do any more field trips, could I sign up for them, Professor,” asked Amy thereby bringing me back from my minor reverie.

“What for dormice?” I clarified.

“Uh no, anything—it’s legend among the first years that they should try and get to one of your lectures and do one of your field trips.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they’re supposed to be something else—didn’t you scatter bat poo everywhere in one of them?”

“That didn’t go down too well with the cleaners if I recall correctly,” Dan smiled.

“Neal and I cleaned up most of it,” I retorted.

“Perhaps it was the sand dune one then.”

“Sand dunes?” queried Amy.

“You not heard about that one?” asked Dan.

“I haven’t heard about that one,” said Tim becoming interested enough to put down his notebook.

“Shall I tell them or do you want to do it, Cathy.”

I shrugged. I got blamed for it but it wasn’t really my fault, I mean students are supposed to be adults aren’t they? Or are they?

“We had these huge tubs of sand with marram grass growing on them and the students had to consider the ecology of sand dunes, while they were doing this some sort of lizard crept out of the tub and tried to climb up some girl’s leg.”

“You’re joking?”

“I’m not am I, Cathy?”

“She had jeans on but that didn’t stop her becoming hysterical and I was worried the lizard could be harmed.”

“Did you know it was in there?” asked Amy.

“No, but we’d got the tubs done by one of the National Trust sites in Dorset who’d just chopped out part of a dune and plonked it in the tubs a few weeks before, how was I to know a sand lizard would take up residence in one of them?”

“Dan was right, things do happen when you’re about, don’t they?”

“No more than anyone else,” I said quietly and Dan nearly choked on his tea.

“She’s dealt with Russian bandits and criminals trying to steal our equipment, including one bloke who was about eight feet tall and built like a gorilla.”

“Wow, how did you deal with him?”

“One of the lab technicians dropped a stool on him from the floor above.”

“We have our uses even to the likes of a crime fighting biologist.”

“Ecologist,” I said firmly, “I only do that when I’m protecting the environment.”

“I stand corrected,“ said Dan bowing to me. I nearly thumped him.

As we stood around sipping coffee and laughing and joking, the door of the visitor centre burst open, “Come quickly, there’s some bloke trying to kill a deer,” said a young woman who looked as if she’d been running.

“See what I mean?” Dan said to Amy.

“How’s he trying to do it?” I asked because people use anything from guns to dogs and if we went out or sent for the police, we needed better information, especially if there was some risk to us as well as the poor deer.

“He’s got some sort of weapon, but I don’t think it’s a gun.”

“Call the police, say he’s armed, I’ll try and see where he’s gone—show me, please,” I said to the woman.

Amy got up to follow me.

“You stay here.”

“No way,” said Amy, “I’m coming too.”