The Local Wildlife

Since my first day here, I’m more and more fascinated by the nature around me, especially by the different animal and insect species that I’m not used to seeing back home. Even though I don’t feel like the climate and surroundings are that much different here compared to France in general, the local wildlife is showing me that they actually are.

In the beginning, I was curious about every insect and little animal I could see, stopping everything to stare at it and watch its behaviour. Wanting to hold them in my hands or at least take a little picture.

Colorful insects, big and small ones, flying or not, with lots of legs or not a single one. I’m used to seeing them in my daily life, but I still see new ones because, of course, there are changes with the seasons.

Now I still get excited when seeing some of them, like scorpions, snakes, stag beetles or fireflies. Sometimes I should be more careful, but my curiosity is a bit too big. Like this time when there was a viper behind the horses’ pond for two mornings in a row, and I was just there looking at it, even though I knew they are venomous. For me, this viper would never have come biting me. It was more scared of me than anything. I think it’s the same for a lot of insects and animals: if you don’t trigger them, they will never come to you and hurt you. They will play dead, try to hide themselves, or even not care about you, but they will not intentionally come at you (unlike mosquitoes).

There was also this time, before the on-arrival training in Sofia, when we encountered the cutest thing that could have happened to us here. We found a litter of baby hedgehogs close to the summer kitchen, under a tree. There were six of them. The first day I saw them, one of them was walking around and wasn’t afraid of me at all. That’s actually how I found them. I heard some noises while I was hanging my clothes out to dry. This little guy was barely able to stand on his feet and kept falling over, but he was really energetic. I found out that he was really thirsty and maybe looking for food as well, because he came towards me and started licking my shoes and clothes (he even came inside my trousers…). Then, I heard more noises under the tree and found one more, then two, then three more, until I counted six. Four of them were sleeping all together, while the other two were walking around. No sign of their mother. The next day, after we gave them a little bit of food and water, they spread out. I hope we didn’t bother them…

I know that once I go back to France, there will be species that I will automatically associate with Bulgaria. 

Zoé