The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1153 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Gareth duly collected Stella and I wished them both a pleasant evening. I really hoped they liked each other because they are essentially nice people, who perhaps deserve a bit of a break. They had both been unlucky in love, Stella with Des being killed and Gareth with his girlfriend being lost on a round the world yacht race. It was an all girl crew and they disappeared somewhere in the South Atlantic. They were all presumed drowned. I’d only found this out from someone who knew him from before his days in Hampshire, when he was a post graduate student at Cardiff doing his PhD, which was when he lost his girl, Fiona Somerfield. I did a search on the net and found a small mention of her. It was back in 2005.

Puddin’ was babysat mainly by Julie, who would use the exercise to blackmail Stella at a later opportunity, usually for money–I let it happen because I saw it as teaching Julie the basics of baby care. Livvie came to help me sort out wee yin, and changed her nappy under my direction. Trish was busy playing Danny on some video game while Simon watched in amazement–they’d both beaten him easily.

Billie looked as if she was sickening for something and went to bed early. I’d have to keep an eye on her. Tom was in his study and I went for a wee chat with him. I asked him if he thought I should do more practical work next year–the dormice would be going into hibernation now, so any found in the nest boxes under about 20g would be considered underweight and brought into the university. We had a session booked for next Saturday when all the nest boxes would be checked during the morning. I was involved in that and Trish and Livvie were coming with me along with a dozen other volunteers from the department.

When Phoebe heard about it she sent me a text asking if she could come too. I warned her that it was hard work, especially if it was wet, and she said she’d be fine, but could she stay for the weekend? I called her mother and agreed if she did come she would catch a bus or train or be sent straight back home–so no more hitching.

We considered that by next May, when the season really got going again, the baby would be six or seven months older and although still feeding from me, would be having solids too and thus able to be left for longer periods.

Tom suggested I should concentrate on the management of the survey and collating the data. After all, that was what my thesis would be about and the advantage of that would be finding new sites and having others check them for me to act as controls against my original sites.

This meant getting someone to survey some suitable sites and to use the Mammal Society’s recommended method. The initial survey would be for signs of dormice–mainly eaten shells of hazel and acorn with possible sightings of nests in suitable undergrowth.

How do you pick a suitable woodland? Well it needs to be able to feed them, so trees and shrubs like oak, Hazel, sycamore. They use honeysuckle bark for making nests with grasses, so that’s quite important if not essential. Once nuts eaten by dormice have been identified, then during the season, one puts up loads of tubes or long boxes–these are corrugated plastic tubes with a wooden insert which blocks the tube at one end, and which has a bit of beading across its base halfway down the tube. The idea is if the tubes are hung from branches facing the trunk of the tree, dormice will nest in them. If you find nests then the next stage is to put up nest boxes.

The tubes, which are actually rectangular things and flat packed when you buy them, need to be checked every week and because they don’t take long to put up, and are relatively cheap, tend to be used in their dozens–the problem being that checking them can be a pain unless you’re doing it as paid project, or have some poor deluded undergrad student who thinks he’s saving the planet to do it for you. Mapping the site is essential, especially when you put up permanent nest boxes and have different people checking them. In secure woodlands, we tend to put up fluorescent ribbons near the nest box so you can find them–they are very easy to miss otherwise. The other thing is to use GPS, which theoretically means you should find them all. However, as they say, theory and practice are only the same in theory, in practice they tend to differ.

The next stage once you have some data from a population is to chip them with the same sort of chips they use in dogs and cats–I know, dormouse and chips, yeah very funny–and then you can begin really collecting data because you know which mouse is which for certain. This means you can monitor weights, distribution and movement, and broods from females. Perhaps buccal scrapes, from the inside of cheeks, or even the needles used to implant the chips will give DNA and even more data can be collected, including possible family trees. So the prospects are very exciting–if the research grants are forthcoming. We have four proposals out at the moment, though with the cut backs the government are discussing, we could lose all of them. Henry might be good for one of them, but we’re talking quite large sums if we go to DNA testing because we’d need a bigger university to do that for us and that’s expensive. I have links with Sussex, so they’d do it for us if we could afford it, unless pissing off Esmond Herbert when I rejected the UN job counts against me.

“Ye should hae tak thae UN job,” Tom opined, he was consistent if nothing else.

“I think I told you I didn’t want it from the start.”

“Ye could hae done lots o’ guid wi’it.”

“I like to think I’m doing some good now, mainly to a group of children who were in need of a mother.”

“Och, dinnae be sae moralistic, ye could hae done that tae.” However, the sparkle in his eyes meant he was winding me up. So I didn’t take the bait. “Esmond thinks ye’re guid enough tae replace him in a few years.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree.”

“C’maff it, hen, ye’re his best student sae far.”

“Since when?” It was the first I’d heard of it.

“Hoo mony got firsts when ye were there?”

“I have no idea–I had my results sent to me.”

“Ye’re thae ony yin in thae last ten years. Why d’ye think I wis sae glad tae hae ye?”

“Because I reminded you of your daughter.”

“Och, that’s below thae belt, sae it is.”

“I’d better go and feed the wee yin, and see what’s happening with Puddin’, she’s looking after Julie for me.”

“Och, ye’re mad as a ha’er.”

“Yep, it’s sniffing all these dormice.”