Captain Moonlight: National What Week?

Charles Nevin
Saturday 23 October 1993 18:02 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

EVERY WEEK is National Something Week these days, don't you find? Condoms, vegetables, sausages, road safety, rhubarb, politeness, a calendar of causes. This week, though, I think you will agree, is rather special: this week is National Dormouse Week. And, appropriately enough, it doesn't get going until Wednesday.

A sympathetic creature, the dormouse. It sleeps for up to seven months a year, and isn't averse to more if the summer turns nasty. All in all, it spends about three-quarters of its life in slumber, hence its name, and appearance in Lewis Carroll. Give your dormouse a hazelnut and it will take a good 20 minutes to nibble it. You don't hurry a dormouse.

You are very lucky if you see one, too. 'The man in charge of mammals at the British Museum has never seen one,' says Dr Pat Morris of Royal Holloway and Bedford College, dormouse expert, who will be giving talks throughout NDW. They are nocturnal, foraging high up in the trees in the summer months, and sleeping in nests a few feet above the ground.

And growing ever more scarce. Difficult to tell, of course, but likely to be fewer than 250,000, according to Dr Morris. Hardly any left in the North, where they find life and the weather increasingly grim. None at all in Yorkshire, it seems. During NDW, which is being organised by English Nature, volunteers will be carrying out a dormouse census by searching for the chewed hazelnuts that mean dormice are dozing nearby. Special sites are being set up. Some dormice will even be fitted with radio transmitters, although I shouldn't have thought the transmissions will be that exciting. How do you tell a dormouse has been at the hazelnuts? Neat, circular holes.

They have no natural enemies. Can you eat them? Not the British dormouse. 'Not even enough for a sandwich,' says Dr Morris. The Romans, though, used to fatten up the more robust European variety, and then store them asleep to be taken off the shelf at will for a snack in the winter months. In 1902, Lord Rothschild imported some on to his estate in Hertfordshire, where they remain local but numerous. Dr Morris said there was a butcher in the Midlands who was breeding his own and offering them at pounds 80 a pair. No, he said, he hadn't; but he might.

(Photograph omitted)

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in