Colophon
The animal on the cover of Using Drupal is a dormouse. Dormice are part of the Gliridae family and originally come from Africa and Southern Europe. There are many species of this rodent, but the most popular and common one on the pet market is the African dormouse. The other known dormice are the “common dormouse” or the “hazel mouse,” and most resemble small squirrels. Their name is derived from the French word dormir, which means to sleep—significant because dormice hibernate for as long as six months, or longer if the weather is cool, awaking only briefly to eat food they stored nearby. During the summer months, they accumulate fat in their bodies, allowing them to hibernate for such long periods of time.
On average, dormice are about four inches long, not including the two-inch bushy tail. They have rounded ears, large eyes, and thick, soft, reddish-brown fur. Dormice have an excellent sense of hearing and use a range of different vocalizations to signal each other. They are very playful, social, and personable animals (more so if you raise them from a young age). Their playfulness consists of flips, climbing rope, and leaping and jumping; they are nocturnal, so they play mostly at night. Being left alone may cause them to become stressed and unhappy, as they thrive on interaction with others.
Dormice feed on fruit, insects, berries, flowers, seeds, and nuts, and they are especially partial to hazelnuts. They are unique among other rodents because they lack a “cecum,” a pouch connected to the colon of the large intestine, which is used in fermenting vegetable matter. Dormice breed once or twice a year and produce an average litter of four young. Their average lifespan is a somewhat short five years. They are born hairless, and their eyes don’t open until about 18 days after birth, rendering them helpless at birth. They become sexually mature after the end of their first hibernation.
The cover image is from an unknown source. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont’s TheSansMonoCondensed.