Fauna Are Bigger in England

Yesterday I woke up at 6 in the morning and decided do my laundry (washers cost 2.20 GBP per load and dryers are one pound for 50 minutes) because clean clothes are important to have around, and I desperately needed some. On my way to the laundromat I came across a bunch of hares. They were so cute! I took a video of one, but the quality is quite poor because I only had my phone on me, and my mobile specializes in producing blurry images. There are lots of hares around campus all year long. They are often skittish and hop away from me at lightning speed, so I hardly ever get a good look at them, but the ones yesterday were much calmer.

Other than hares, the University of Warwick is home to several types of birds, like swans and geese, as well. There is a pool of still water (I think it is supposed to be a fountain or some other pleasant, decorative thing, but in reality it simply attracts mosquitos and other bugs that thrive in unmoving water) in front of my dorm where ducks like to swim. It is fun watching them play in the water and fluff up their feathers. The other day, I even saw a mother duck with her tiny duckings in tow!

Birds in this area are, as my boyfriend who is currently vacationing in Ireland put it, “really burly.” I still have not gotten used to how muscular they appear. Pigeons are sturdy-looking--a sentence I have never uttered before arriving in England. Other birds one would expect to be small and graceful are simply shockingly large.

I have also noticed some bugs are bigger in England than in the US. A few days ago, a bee buzzed into my room. Normally I am kind of okay with bees; they frighten me but I can somehow learn to coexist if absolutely necessary. However, this bee was enormous. It was the size of a wasp one might find in America. I screamed and ran out into the hallway where I set up camp until 4 in the morning when my (incredibly kind) Ukrainian neighbor returned to the dorm and agreed to catch the stinger. “You were so scared of a bee you left your room?” he inquired. “How cute.” I guess bees in Ukraine are also gigantic. What I do know for sure is that I am never opening my window ever again.

Long story short, whoever said everything is bigger in Texas was so wrong.