Animals are Awesome - Emily Brown

In honour of recently being pretty stressed out with everything that’s happening in my life, I’ve decided to write a very chilled out blog post this week (not the one I planned) about… Well, as you’ve probably guessed from the title, animals.

Being a vegetarian (yes, you now all know this, I won’t mention it again), I’ve always respected animals – especially the animals I like, which is what I’m writing about today.

So, to start off this blog, I will introduce my all time, long-standing, favourite animal the Koala bear. Yes, you read that right. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always loved Koalas. This might be because of the amazing kid’s show I used to watch: “The Koala Brothers” (which I’ve just realised lasted a lot long than I thought it did – up until 2007 when I wasn’t quite as young). It might also not be because of this. Either way, no matter how I first fell in love with Koalas, they have been my favourite and will probably remain my favourite animal for a long while yet.

To all of you who may not know, this is what a koala bear looks like:

As you can see, they are one of the cutest animals on the planet. While everyone likes to tell me how they’re actually very vicious animals – including most animal channels on the television – I find it hard to believe that Koalas are evil spawns of Satan, and so as a result I still have the very intense urge to hug one.However, considering that there are currently only two places in the UK which would allow me to look at a Koala (hello, Longleat and Edinburgh zoo, I will visit you one day), I doubt that they would let me get any closer to them than the wall of their enclosure (sigh).

Therefore, we will take a step back and admire my next favourite animal, the Giraffe, which I know I can feed at some zoos in the UK (although I haven’t really researched into this). I’m pretty sure all of you know what a Giraffe looks like, but for the sake of this blog, I have a reference photo:

Maybe it’s because of the intense height difference, or maybe it’s because they’re just all around awesome, and seem – at least to me – to defy all laws of physics (I mean, come on, how can something have such a long neck, which is almost cartoonistic, and still be alive and real? I don’t know). Giraffes are great. They also have such a chilled-out life. I’d love to walk around super tall and eat leaves all day.

Side Note: Please, for the love of everything, ask YouTube for a video of a Giraffe running. You will thank me. And after watching it, please imagine one of these magnificent animals running at full speed towards you – and imagine how much you would crap your pants. It’s awesome.

Anyway, moving on from the giraffe, we arrive next at the bat. To all of you asking, I know there are a lot of different species of bat, but the answer to my favourite will be something you don’t get. This is mostly because I do not know the different species of bat (my knowledge extends to the fruit bat and the Vampire bat – which I’m not entirely sure isn’t made up). I admire the fact that bats sleep upside down, and they were one of my main inspirations for the Fallen Angel demons in my Dimension book series.

I also like the idea that something which can be seen, potentially, as actually pretty ugly has the ability to be so elegant as well as able to fly. Bats are typically seen as Halloween animals, or animals from horror movies, and I love the fact that they can defy all stereotypes and fly around most of the night eating fruit and bugs. Maybe it’s just the darker side of me that likes them. Who knows? All I know is that I have a soft spot for them.

Finally, and moving onto domestic animals, while I love my beautiful dogs, I do kind of prefer cats. As my wonderful boyfriend knows, I stop dead in my tracks the second I see a cat when walking, and instantly try to get it to love me. While nine times out of ten this fails, I still adore them. They’re so cute, and so soft and I’m mildly allergic to them (which, if you think about it, is actually really cruel – cough, thank you dad for your allergies, cough).

Pictured below is our cat Ballarama who was an amazing pet for the sixteen years he was in my life for, and in the years before I was born – or so I’m told. I still miss him to this day. He was such a gentle cat, to the point that my little sister could use him as a pillow, and you could tell that he loved us all.

There you have it, my favourite animals. Most are pretty odd, I’m sure not many people like bats, but then I am pretty odd. As always, thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy your week!

(Disclaimer: all credit to the amazing photographers for their photos of the Koala, Giraffe and Bat.)

Want to find out more about my books? Follow the link below.
www.emilybrown.org.uk

You can also find me on Instagram: @emilybrownauthor

I also have a Spotify playlist which you can find below as well.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2rfakaE1iuqx5aMgL259L0?si=3Zhr4BPhRcuyPqH_Q_Ux_A