The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2954 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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For the next couple of days nothing much happened regarding Joshua Dell, the police told me nothing and more importantly, neither did James. Sometimes he does seem to have a radio silence and other times he’s sending me facts all the time. This was in the former category.

The only person I heard from was Andy Bond who told me he couldn’t make the dormousing. I immediately wondered if he’d been told off for fraternising with the enemy, but there’d be other times and I’m sure he’d enjoy it.

On Friday I mentioned it to Trish and Danielle; Danni was playing football on Sunday and would love to come, Trish said yes before I gave any details. Livvie only decided to come when she knew the other two were. Meems decided she’d look after her daddy while we were out enjoying ourselves. She’s always been a daddy’s girl and looks to remain so. Mind you he spoils her to death as well. Because I didn’t have a good relationship with my own father until I’d transitioned and he’d had to accept me or lose me after my mother died, I really wanted Si to have a real part in our children’s lives and given the constraints of his job, he does show some effort in doing so. We’ve had the odd disaster when he should have been somewhere to support one of the girls and he’s been unable to get there for whatever reason ad of course the same has once or twice happened to me as well. I think the situation is called life.

Saturday morning dawned but only just because of the rain it was pretty misty and murky and dark. After breakfast I sorted out my waterproofs, Danielle had some she used for cycling and with Trish we improvised putting an old pair of my gaiters on her legs above her wellingtons which with her long cagoule thing, meant she’d be mostly dry. Livvie took one look at the weather and went back to bed.

We met at the rendezvous with the other surveyors, there were five of us in all with two of us having licences. We split into two groups and agreed to do half the plot each. That meant we had about fifty boxes to check. I’ve done more on my own and with the greatest of respect, Danni and Trish were going to slow me down. I decided to keep them with me and they’d share in any finds we had. Trish had her camera and Danielle would be our weighing lady and carried my little balance with her.

Essentially, what we did was to locate the boxes, then after covering the hole in the back to prevent any occupants escaping, I’d check the box by sliding the lid a little to see into the box. Any nesting material, unless there was blue tit or eggs in the nest, we’d have them off the tree and checked them. So far we’d checked about five with nests and had nothing. I was keeping a record as we went along. An hour later, we were into our final dozen when my phone rang to say the others had had one dormouse details would be given on Monday and they were soaked and going home.

We soldiered on and with two more boxes to go, we found a torpid dormouse in an otherwise empty box. It was a little female and weighed just eleven grams. So she was presumably saving energy by sleeping away the poor weather. A few yards further on we got our second dormouse and this one was more lively requiring some effort to keep her in hand she was wriggling so much. She was five grams heavier and I wondered if the weight difference was the real cause of the difference in their activity levels. Trish got to check her for the microchips but she nor the other one had been chipped and with the weather as it was, i wasn’t going to start doing them in the heavy rain.

Although we were all quite damp despite the wet weather gear but my two assistants thought they’d had good fun and I was pleased that two of my kids had participated in one of my favourite activities. It was very important to me that at least some of them did and did so willingly. Hopefully the younger ones would get a chance to try it as they got older. Walking round soggy woodland is no place for young children.

We stopped for a drink on the way home aware that David was probably serving up lunch to the rest of the family—at least those who were home—while we struggled to cope with tea and a plate of chips, while I wrote up my dormouse log. We’re required to keep details and send a summary to Natural England each year to maintain our licences and you need a log to refer to for those summaries. This time it would seem we had three dormice from a hundred boxes—not the best start to a season but neither was it the worst. I am also convinced that climate change is partly responsible for a drop in the population in recent years though I have yet to discover how we prove it because of other variables involved.

My concern is that the mild damp winters cause the animals to emerge from hibernation and then discovering there is no food available attempt hibernation again but don’t then have enough fat to last the winter. There might be other causes including discovery by predators, drowning if there is a lot of rain, or fungal diseases.

It strikes me as puzzling that a creature who is on the edge of its natural range in this country, doesn’t do better here. In very cold weather they can die, they don’t function too well in very hot weather when they become torpid or in cold snaps, when they do the same. On the continent where the weather is by definition, continental, they seem to do better yet it’s colder in winter and hotter in summer, though it’s also normally drier than our oceanic climate—the problem of being a small rock in a large sea.

On completing my log in the dry and warm atmosphere of the cafe, we headed home where the two girls would probably demand a second lunch, though I certainly wouldn’t.

Sunday was forecast to be showery, at times heavy, yet Simon and Tom managed to do some gardening while I did housework in the morning and took Danni to her soccer game in the evening. I sat and watched her play, including scoring a goal and making another, making her the leading goal scorer for the club. Considering she lost some time and fitness to time out and injury, she is quite prolific and she said that if she stayed there next year, she wanted to raise the record by several goals. Currently it stands at seventeen in a season. She effectively got fifteen this year in what was really only half a season. No wonder England want her.