The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1832 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“What’s this?” Trish had found the emailed newspaper article. Her query was replaced with a chuckle as she found the rest of the coven I’d just brought from school. Something of a gigglefest followed it and it was this noise which drew my attention.

“What’s all the noise about?” I’d just come down stairs from changing into some warmer clothes, it having become cooler since lunch time.

Danny had obviously been attracted by the same noise and was busy looking at the paper. “Wow, David goes for a knockout,” he said loudly. I couldn’t remember who’d left the paper on the dining room table, it could even have been me, so there was no one to blame. I suppose the chattering class would have found out about it sooner or later, so in that regard it simply moved things forward.

“Right you lot, this doesn’t go beyond the house–so no telling schoolmates–okay?” Of course they all grumbled, and I could imagine them telling their friends how the cook decked some guy at a funeral. It would be big news–‘What, you have a cook? What does your mother do?’

I suppose there are some quite posh students at St Claires, possibly not as wealthy as the Camerons, so perhaps they wouldn’t be as shocked as students at Danny’s school. Still, hopefully my request will be honoured by my children so David’s value as a pugilist will remain under the proverbial bushel.

I’d spent a couple of hours working on my dissertation, which was now almost at a draft stage. I’d highlighted the need for conservation of small mammals, suggesting that the dormouse projects around the country had helped to secure the viability of a number of populations of dormice, and that there was a need to do the same for harvest mice, water voles and perhaps even hedgehogs–which are declining rapidly. With the latter, there was opportunity for interaction with the general public, as even a blind man can recognise a tiggywinkle from any other British mammal, and the frequent occurrence of hedgehogs in gardens makes it a very possible form of conservation.

I’m not sure if we’ll have people buying hedgehog food or even meal worms like they do peanuts for blue tits, but you never know with the British public. Just when you think they’re all homophobic, self-serving, materialist arseholes, they do something which causes you to think again. The numbers of volunteers that have turned out in Machynlleth to search for the missing little girl is astonishing. They’ve appeared in their hundreds–I do so hope they find her alive, her poor parents must be going through hell, as must she if she’s still alive. I’ll never understand how anyone could hurt a child, or for that matter, find them sexually attractive–ugh, it makes my flesh crawl.

I’ve never been to Machynlleth, though I recall mention of it in the country diary in the Guardian when I was a kid, written by a bloke called William Condry. They were always wonderful short essays written by a man of great knowledge of the natural world, but without sentimentality. I admit it was something which encouraged me to do what I do now, counting dormice and other things biological.

“Mummy, why did David hit that man?” Trish had interrupted my thoughts.

“How should I know?” I tried bluffing my way out of it first.

“Because that’s you in the picture too.” Okay, so her eyes work.

“Don’t tell the others, alright?”

“You know me, Mummy,” and she pretended to zip her mouth shut; which probably means they’ll all know ten seconds after I tell her.

“Okay, I was there. David has an elder brother called Arthur, who has bullied David since they were kids. He tried to do it at their father’s funeral, and he also threatened me, which was when David, who had been pushed and shoved and also punched at, hit him bang on the proboscis.”

“What’s bosis, Mummy?”

Why do I never learn? If I’d mentioned quarks or photons, she’d know what I was on about–oh well, here goes. “It’s a beak like structure in some insects, it’s also the tongue in some butterflies and moths. It’s used as a slang term for a nose.”

“If butterflies have a tongue for a nose, how do they smell things?” She stuck out her tongue and pretended to sniff me with it.

“You dope, they taste things with their feet, that’s how.”

She roared with laughter thinking I was kidding her.

“It’s true, they do. Moths smell each other with their antennae which pick up pheromones–chemicals they use to attract mates for breeding. Snakes and lizards use their tongues for smelling things, and they and some mammals such as cats have a special organ in the roof of the mouth, called a Jacobson’s organ. Sometimes cats will sniff you with their mouths open, they’re using their Jacobson’s organ.”

“Is that why snakes are always flicking their tongues in and out?” Trish had made an observation regarding something other than quantum physics–miracles never cease.

“Yes, they’re carrying scent over their vomeronasal organ,” I never learn, do I?

“Their vomitonosy organ? Ugh, how horrid, Mummy.”

“Let’s just call it a Jacobson’s organ, shall we?”

“Have I got one?” she asked pretending to sniff me while flicking her tongue.

“Humans have a rudimentary one but it doesn’t have any function, so they think, just like our tails.”

“Tails?” she shrieked, “We don’t have tails–do we?” I had to wait for her to stop laughing by which time Livvie had arrived.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded of her sister.

Trish started her tongue flicking again and looked more like Hannibal Lecter than a snake.

“Wotcha doin’?” asked Livvie sniggering.

“Sniffing you, you got a vomit-thingy organ, like snakes have.”

“Jacobson’s organ,” I offered, “and it isn’t functional in humans.”

“Yeah, one of them, you got a tail, too,” Trish informed her sister.

“I know, it’s called a cockette or something’.”

Livvie’s response caught Trish in mid tongue flick. “A what?”

“It’s called a coccyx and it’s the final bone on the spine, tucked down inside your bum.”

“How can that be a tail if it’s stuck inside you? You can hardly wag it down there can you?” She started to waggle her bum and so did Livvie.

“It isn’t designed to be wagged, it’s just a left over from our evolution from the apes, although they don’t have tails either, but a long way back when apes and monkeys split up from a common ancestor...” I’ve done it again, their bemused faces showed me that.

“Darwin said we came from monkeys, didn’t he, Mummy?” asked Livvie who’d been processing what I’d said.

“Not quite, he suggested we had common ancestors way back in time.”

“Like when the dinosaurs were about?” she asked, showing some understanding of both geological time and its inhabitants.

“Probably after the dinosaurs,” I suggested.

“Dinosaur means terrible lizard,” threw in Trish, “I wonder if T Rex went around flicking his tongue, she demonstrated her impression of one roaring like a bear with a sore head and holding her hands like she’d seen pictures of the world’s best known prehistoric carnivore.

I watched them both turn from schoolgirls into their version of Tyrannosaurus Rex and go rampaging into the lounge bringing squeals and giggles from Mima and Puddin’. Another day in the life of a madcap family.