Dormouse

FATAL WINTER SLEEP
If we had to choose any one animal as a symbol of sleepiness, one of the favoured candidates would be the dormouse.

Indeed, the first part of its name, from the French dormir - to sleep, is singularly appropriate. The common or hazel dormouse sleeps in hibernation for at least six months of the year, it spends the daylight hours of spring and summer asleep, and even when feeding at night it alternates between spells of activity and periods when it seems almost to go to sleep sitting on a twig. During the summer, a dormouse enjoys a greater security than most small animals.

Although dormice can be seen about by day, this is a rare occurrence and normally they sleep out the daylight hours. Their sleeping nests are in the forks of saplings; usually well up above ground level, not readily accessible to enemies on the ground and not particularly vulnerable to winged enemies.

At night, when feeding, they clamber through the slender branches, above the reach of ground predators, and protected by twigs and foliage from owls. One of their main dangers is from domestic cats, some of which will travel as much as three miles there and three miles back in a night to hunt in the woods.

In October, the dormouse hibernates and we think of it securely tucked up in its nest, in a hollow stump, in a hole in the ground, or more commonly, under the carpet of leaf litter. If this notion were correct, there would be the puzzle why this small animal leading a life of so little danger should be as rare as it is. The nest, whether that used in summer or the one used in winter, has no special entrance. The dormouse just pushes through the wall of the nest wherever it is most convenient and on its return to the nest it pulls the fibres together again behind it as if shutting the door. Very rarely will a dormouse use the same "door" more than once.

However, winter seems to be its time of greater danger. Far from being safely asleep, it has come down to ground level, and its fibrous nest, excellent for keeping out cold, is no protection against marauders. Predatory birds like magpies and carrion crows find it. Foxes, badgers, stoats and weasels at times, possibly even rats, may between them kill four out of every five during this resting period.

Dormice must be very desirable items of food to these predators. Before curling up into a ball to sleep away the winter the dormouse eats abundantly for several weeks and builds up a store of fat. In captivity, it has been found to eat so excessively in the autumn that rolls of fat could be seen on its body.

The spring awakening of a dormouse is gradual. It takes a deep breath or two and occasionally moves or stretches a limb, and finally, as the outside temperature warms up, the dormouse will poke its nose through the nest and soon be out feeding again.