Completely unnoticed amidst all the fuss about climate activists, a dormouse recently sneaked into Frankfurt Airport and, according to Frankfurter Rundschau “dramatic scenes”. According to all unconfirmed rumors, the police investigation is still in full swing, but at least the course of events seems to have been clarified: On an August evening at around 10.45 p.m., the rodent caused a short circuit in a transformer station at Germany’s largest airport. The consequences: smoke development, fire service, power outage in large parts of Terminal 1, and this for several hours. At the same time – or so corrected Daily News Previous reports – the dormouse did not even have to use its fearsome incisors. Apparently, the mere contact with a cable was enough. The animal was found dead next to it.
The authorities should have been warned. This was by no means the first attack of this kind on holiday freedom – and for some time now, wild animals have even been increasing their frequency. In 2004, many years before any previous generation, a pack of wild boars “temporarily brought traffic at Luxembourg Airport to a standstill” (Verkehrsinfrastruktur-Deutsch). In 2011, 150 turtles caused numerous delays at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. According to press reports, the animals wanted to go to the beach to lay their eggs. However, no statement has been made by the turtles themselves. Turtle experts are not the only ones who wonder why the reptiles, not known for their sprinting abilities, could not have been intercepted earlier, even as a group that is visible from afar.
In autumn last year, beavers cut off the tourist resort of Oberstdorf in the Allgäu from train traffic for weeks with their burrows. Meanwhile, in North Rhine-Westphalia, a few badgers destroyed a railway embankment with a total of 140 tunnel entrances and underground passages that were presumably 1,500 metres long over a period of years. How did these excavations go unnoticed for so long? Or is this a particularly clever faunistic pact?
This brings us back to the Frankfurt dormouse. Its jump onto the power cable raises further questions. Was it the desperate act of a loner who, due to shorter winters, must face the brutal fact that he will soon degenerate into a five-sleeper? Are we already faced with the unspeakable choice: late riser or long-haul flight? The fact that the action caused little trouble so shortly before the night flight ban speaks against the logical-sounding theory that the dormouse was connected to the climate stickers.
The information from the German Wildlife Foundation is also food for thought in this context: the dormouse actually gives birth to its offspring in August. However, thanks to its relatively high life expectancy, it can wait several years before reproducing until “environmental conditions are favorable again”. Can we even assume that it was a specimen from the last generation of climate rodents?
