The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1692 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I arrived at the university and parked my car, displaying the parking permit. One of my colleagues forgot to do so and was clamped—he’s walked funny ever since.

I walked briskly into the department and after speaking to Pippa I made my way to the lecture theatre, my heels clicking on the hard ceramic floors. I set up and spoke to the technician as students filed in seeming bemused that they weren’t offered any tickets.

I passed around a clipboard with a pen, “Please sign and print your name and the seat number, thanks. Now while that’s going round, the rest of you can enjoy a few out takes of hedgehog behaviour. This is an idea I’m playing with for a short film, we shot this while we were making Dormouse.

For the next ten minutes, they sat and laughed at the antics of a hedgehog family which inhabits Tom’s garden. Alan was giving me lessons in filming things, so some of it is especially bad. The funniest bit was when one of the little ones went dashing about and fell into the pond and Alan had to fish it out, he got quite damp.

I passed the list onto Neal, the technician, who then went into the prep room behind the stage and divided the list into three based on seat number, he then typed them into three lists which we would display at the end of the lecture. I began my spiel. “I’m Cathy Watts, welcome to the introduction to ecology, the science which might just help to save our planet.”

Each time I do it, it’s very slightly different and without too many notes, I usually talk to slides and I don’t mean Power Point, although that has its uses, I try to lull them into a sense that what they’re seeing is new—so lots of photos of dormice—usually Photoshopped to make it look like they’re holding captions instead of nuts or fruit. Given that the classes are now female dominated, it gets a few oohs and ahs and giggles.

For the next hour I bored the pants off them—no I didn’t I amused and educated them—least that’s what they pay me for, the last bit anyway. Finally, before we wrapped up I got Neal to show the lists on the screen.

“If you look carefully you’ll see which group you are in for this term and the list of the rotations for each group. It’s essential you do all three groups, because your coursework will require it. Please make a note of which group you start in, mine’s the mammal group and we’ll be doing a study on hedgehogs, depending upon how we view your field skills, we might invite you to join our dormouse monitoring group. Each of these groups will be run by an experienced teacher but there will also be some of my third years helping out because the groups are so large.

“As well as the field skills we’ll be teaching you, we’ll expect you to pick a subject of your own, which might be an animal, a plant, a fungus or an ecosystem to conduct your own short study. Motorway verges are not recommended.

“Thank you for your time.” I concluded their first ordeal by Cameron.

“Phew, I thought we might have a rebellion when we selected the groups.”

“Nah, you charmed them into submission,” Neal smiled at me.

“How’s Phoebe?”

“Doing her A-levels.”

“Wow, what’s she planning on doing?”

“Your ecology degree.”

“You’re joking?”

“I’m not, she’s doing biology, chemistry and physics and has told me she wants to come here and study under you.”

“I thought she had some sense, and besides she always seemed more interested in girly things like fashion and makeup.”

“Looked in the mirror lately?”

“Yes, before I went out there to give them bread and hedgehogs.”

“I always thought it was bread and circuses, Pliny, if I remember correctly.”

“Elder or younger?” I asked him, adding, “There were two.”

“You’re joshing me, Cathy.”

“There were two, the elder and the younger, but it was Tacitus who made the quote I think. He was a constant critic of the system.”

“How come you aren’t teaching history?”

“I was rubbish at Latin, how goes the poem? Oh yes:

Latin is a language as dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me.”

“I can’t believe you flunked Latin, I mean you’re always quoting Latin bits.”

“Quotes are fine, Sic transit gloria, and all that. But it’s like memorising anything, it could just as easily be learned by a parrot. Learning things by heart is fine for times tables, two twos are four, three twos are six and so on, but not for anything which needs analysis.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“Remember in learning languages, it might be useful for learning irregular verbs by rote or repetition, but using them requires a more complete form of learning, such as case and tense and all the bloody rest of it. I was rubbish because it bored me rigid whereas understanding systems of wildlife excited me and still does. I get such a buzz from watching nature be it grasshoppers in the garden or badgers bashing through the undergrowth. My first study was parasites in badger bedding.”

“How did you do that?”

“Bristol was full of sites of badger setts, I just waited to find which of them put their bedding out to air and took samples. I used to scoop it up in a large net and shake any denizens out of it into a small bottle.”

“And the most numerous?”

“Fleas, occasionally lice.”

“Lovely,” he said scratching.

“Come on, I’ll buy you a cuppa at the refectory.”

“We could make one down at the labs.”

“I didn’t have much breakfast and they do some nice sticky buns.”

“Sticky buns? They do a mean bacon sarnie.”

“I know—damn, you’ve destroyed my resolve now. Okay, bacon sarnies it is.” I ordered our comestibles. “You weren’t joking about Phoebe, were you?”

“No I wasn’t, she loved your film and fancies making wildlife documentaries.”

“Wouldn’t she be better learning to use a camera?”

“She thinks learning how to find your animal and then follow it is much more useful.”

“So she could do a short course in tracking or tracks trails and signs.”

“No, she thinks being an ecologist, is what it takes to write books and make films.”

“Is she planning of standing in front of or behind the camera?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said as we queued for our mid morning snack, which was delicious and at two quid each, great value.

We sat quietly munching our dead pig sandwich which Neal finished more quickly than I did. “How’s Julie these days?”

“Turning into quite a beauty when she tries.”

“Well she takes after her mother, doesn’t she—her adopted mother,” he added quickly before I could come back at him for inaccuracy.