The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3066 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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So the Paris climate accord has been implemented—oh good so the world’s been saved. Like hell, it’s too little too late. I can just see them switching off all those coal fired power stations in China and elsewhere. Even the UK still has some and its emergency contingencies include using them in the winter. Still when the ice caps have all but gone and the sea levels risen, we’ll know, assuming we haven’t been drowned, that the United Nations saved us. I just hope if Trump wins he doesn’t withdraw from the treaty because he doesn’t believe in climate change and his running mate doesn’t believe in evolution—what a pair.

It was Friday already and I’d got the day off to do a dormouse survey to which I’d invited Liz. So who was watching the children? Jacquie, who’d been promised some help with her latest assignment in her university course. I think I mentioned she was doing history, and Liz is an historian, teaching in the local schools. She’s also, apparently, writing a book about the history and development of Portsmouth. Sooner her than me, it would take me a lifetime if I did it, but then I’m a biologist not a historian.

Danni was up for it again and so was Trish. As we seemed to have had such good fun last time, Livvie decided to come, complete with camera. I told her I didn’t have much information about this site as it’s not one I usually monitored, but was doing for the local landowner who was a friend of Henry’s. Apparently, it was usually done by a team run by a local chap who is a licence holder but for some reason fell out with the owner.

I’d also managed to rope in a couple of my post grad students who wanted handling practice, so we had a small team who met at Boxcombe Manor, which is up past Waterlooville and turn left somewhere. Somehow we found it but only because Trish was using her iPhone’s sat nav or something, might have been her ipad.

The estate is about two hundred hectares, or a thousand acres with an area of woodland and mixed farmland. The part we were interested in was the woodland and hedgerows surrounding it. We pulled up to the front of the manor house which was a beautiful stone house with towering chimneys, the whole pile probably best described as Georgian with Victorian extensions. I parked my car in front and checked everyone was okay. Ten minutes later my support team arrived in an old Ford escort. Two minutes after that, the Rt Hon William Stephens wandered out from the house.

“Ah you must be Professor Watts,” he said to Liz.

“Uh no, that’s me,” I said to the embarrassed country gentleman cum city businessman.

“Sorry, of course, I saw your film. Sorry I’m late, was trying to locate these for you. Had to print some more off.”

He handed me half a dozen maps of the siting of the dormouse boxes and tubes. I looked at it and the large scale OS map that Trish was holding. Well it looked as if they roughly matched, which is more than some maps I’ve seen of estates or farms purportedly describing where things are but obviously drawn by someone who is either blind or drunk or perhaps blind drunk. According to this we had two hundred boxes or tubes in four clusters of fifty. Assuming we can find them, this shouldn’t take too long.

Our host walked us out to the woodland which included walking up a small but quite steep hill. It took us about fifteen minutes to get there and he gave me some photocopied records of the previous year’s surveys. It seemed they rarely had less than half a dozen dormice and as many as ten on one occasion. Given it was a bit late and also becoming colder, I told him not to hold his breath as the numbers would most likely be small.

A while ago I bought half a dozen mirrors on telescopic handles and with two LED lights on them. The mirrors had a universal type joint attaching them to the handles so they were ideal for looking into tubes.

Dormouse tubes are about eighteen inches long by about three inches square. They’re made of corrugated plastic, such as they use for temporary road signs, only the tubes are black or dark grey as opposed to yellow. Inside the tube is a wooden insert with a block at one end and some beading across the width of it, half way along. You hang them along branches of trees and shrubs and dormice enter by the open end and build nests in them—you wish.

(Photo courtesy of NHBS)

Anything with dormice is hit and miss, it’s a bit like working with children but possibly not as bad as trying to direct cats. They, the dormice, do their own thing and all you can do is put the things up in likely spots—knowing where those are comes with experience—or you can do it all scientific like with guide from the Mammal Society. I usually do my own thing, which probably comes as no surprise to most of you.

So having been shown where they were, the tubes—well, actually, he showed us where he thought they were supposed to be and left us to it. Asking how long it would take, I told him probably two or two and a half hours, depending upon how quickly we found them. He invited us to call to the manor house for coffee and biccie afterwards, which I accepted on behalf of the rest.
Talk about needles and haystacks, some of the tubes had been up for years, two fell apart as soon as they were touched and several others had fallen off the branch or the branch had broken off.

My mirrors saved us both time and several scratches as they brambles had grown around many of the tubes and Livvie enjoyed herself photographing her sisters getting all tangled up in the hedgerows while they searched for the tubes and then tried to see inside them.

Checking them if you think you have something is similar to boxes, you block the open end and take them off the branch—easier said than done—and into the large plastic bag, where you push the open end of the wooden insert thereby forcing the blocked end out of the tube. We had a couple of nests of dormouse construction and one of wood mouse, but none of the builders.

On site two, it was much the same and we tried to repair detached tubes with some soft wire I had for the task. It was a last minute inclusion which I grabbed from the shed just before we left—while we waited for Danielle to add ten coats of mascara. More empty boxes with three old dormouse nests but no inhabitants. Liz was becoming a bit despondent and it was amusing to hear Trish reassuring her that we’d find one, as her mum was the best dormouse expert in the world. Yeah, right. Even if I were what she said, if there are none there, I can’t find them.

Site three, we struck gold—well okay, dormouse. We finally had one in the tube, a female who weighed in at twenty grams, so she should have enough fat to get through the winter. In box 149, we found a dead one and that depressed all of us, especially as it had obviously been scavenged by something. I buried it and washed out the tube with my bottle of water, wiping it on some large leaves.

The girls were quite upset, I suppose I’m a bit more used to it having seen it a few times, but we moved on to site four where we found two more dormice and a wood mouse in situ, not in the same tube, I hasten to add.