The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3056 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

---

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.
*****

I was surprised when I woke up that my eyes weren’t all sore or my eyelids stuck together, but they weren’t. Neither did I feel as if I’d missed any sleep—surely I didn’t dream the whole thing last night, did I? I can’t have done, it was too real. Still puzzling I washed and dressed, called the girls to get up and went downstairs where two mugs sat on the draining board awaiting washing. It was real; confirmed by Tom coming in with his ‘dug’ and yawning. He smiled at me with great warmth so I went and gave him a hug. “Thank you for last night,” I said before planting a peck on his cheek.

“It’s a sair fecht,” he muttered to himself as blushing he went off to change for work.

After dropping the girls to school, I drove on to the university and dealt with the first of my meetings. It went without any hitches and quicker than expected. There was time for a quick cuppa before the next, which again went better than expected. Now I knew I must be dreaming, meetings with the auditor never leave me feeling in a good mood. But it did. I also discovered, with his help, half a million pounds that we needed to spend quickly. I sent out an email to each department—or Diane did asking for equipment wish lists. By the time I went this afternoon, I’d have spent all the money and one or two departmental heads would feel very happy.

The law of averages suggested that meeting number three would be the awful one. It proved to be the exception that proved the rule, whatever that means. It went very well and I finished it in time to call Tom and ask if he’d like me to buy him lunch. His secretary had to go and wake him up—everyone together—awwww.

He sleepwalked over fifteen minutes later but by the time the chicken curry was shoved under his nose, he rallied enough to scoff it all before I was half way through my tuna salad. I reported that I’d had three good meetings and he recounted that he’d cancelled two because he fell asleep in his chair. He should be retired not doing an exhausting job like vice chancellor; plus living with a neurotic like me, must be exhausting.

I had seen in my paper that Tasmanian devils seemed to be developing immunity to a form of facial cancer, which is apparently caused by a virus. That was great news because the disease had wiped out about 80% of them. They may not be either the most beautiful or good tempered of animals but I was pleased to hear their numbers may well rise again. A second story about the same animal suggested that they have some potent antibiotic like substance in their milk and tests with a synthetic copy of the DNA sequence had shown it killed all sorts of bacteria and fungi, including Staph aureus, the one in MRSA. So let’s hear it for the Tasmanian devil which appears infinitely more interesting than his incarnation in Bugs Bunny.

I discussed this with Tom who seemed unaware of both these stories. Doubtless he’d look them up on the internet before he came home. I thought it just showed how good things may arise in the strangest places and the fact that hundreds of species will become extinct before we ever even recognise them, let alone study them or their potential. My case about the Amazon and its probable extinctions seemed even more apposite today. I’m tempted to send a link to Simon but I doubt he’d be able to make the link between the two stories and probably ask if I was suggesting sending Tasmanian devils to Brazil to eat all the dead fish and dolphins killed by the dams.

I collected the girls and on arriving home saw we had enough light for a bike ride. There was a definite chill in the air this morning and it returned this evening. I sent all those who wanted a ride to go and change. This was done with much: shouting, squealing, shrieking and dog’s barks. Kiki had to muscle in on the act and danced around barking with her ears flapping like two windsocks.

We did an hour’s ride which I felt invigorated me. Danni also looked quite fresh but Trish and Hannah looked a bit tired. I decided not to ask questions as I probably wouldn’t understand the answers anyway—especially if I receive quantum answers. The way she completely muddled things from a television programme Jim Al Khalili did on quantum biology showed she still lacks a little maturity in her thinking, but it’s coming together very well. I still smirk at the thought of a robin’s green and blue balls—didn’t think they were big enough to see what colour they were.

Of course the black dormouse in Devon, in the Blackdown hills was a bit of a turn up. They usually only occur in a single place in Germany and have never been seen anywhere else—until this year in Devon—weird or what? It’s obviously a genetic mutation of some sort and given that populations of dormice are dropping and have been so since the turn of the century, may be some sort of response to this phenomenon. Still the figures from my dormouse spotting students showed a small rise in numbers from the earlier seeming slump at the beginning of the season. This often happens but nine animals from a site which had only twice before been surveyed and which produced zilch in the earlier ones.

I’ve said before that we don’t know if we’re doing the best job we can with regard to monitoring dormice or anything else for that matter. It’s practically impossible to count them all, so a small, essentially nocturnal, creature that spends most of its waking hours up in the tree canopy, is not going to be the easiest to count by anyone’s standards.

New technology may provide a way to do it or someone may come up with a revolutionary new idea but until then, all I can do is say that on a certain day and time when we conducted the survey, we had so many animals. It’s crude but it does give a sort of baseline.

I remembered seeing a paper by a woman in Dorset who claimed that dormice were far more numerous than was commonly thought but that we were limited in appreciating their populations because we were stuck in a rut of using nest boxes and tubes to count them. I also went around counting any nests I could see but they’re not the easiest things to find and training others to see them is equally difficult. It requires you to get your eye in, as bird watchers say and then you may see a few, usually in the winter when some of the leaves in the hedgerows are missing. Maybe I’ll show some of the brighter post grad students how to do it and see how many they can find—especially as digital cameras are so cheap to run.

Will Simon show up tonight or stay away again? I honestly didn’t know but I wasn’t wasting any more time thinking about it.