I love our animals and bugs.

I think we’ve got the best bunch of animals and bugs in the world in my country (UK).

I just saw a beetle beetling past me on the wall so I gathered it up and sent it on its way out the window. While I was doing this it occurred to me that we must have the most tame and inoffensive selection of critters in the world.

Our “wild” animals are of the type that stay well out of your way and, in any case, could do you no harm - foxes, badgers, deer.

You can walk in our woods without any fear of running into bears or wolves. We dont even have any wild dogs - you could walk up to 99% of our dogs and stroke them.

Our deadliest animal is the viper but this is very rare, lives only in a small area in the extreme south and, in any case, is so shy that you’d never get near enough to it for it to bite you. And even if it did bite you, you wouldnt die.

But what really clinches it are our bugs:

Mosquitos - we get a few mosquitos but they are mainly in the south. They are small and die off every time we get a cold day (which is often) so to all intents and purposes we dont have mosquitos. I’ve certainly never been bitten by one in this country although I get bitten to hell whenever I go to any other country.

Ticks - no woodland ticks at all. All our woodland bugs and animals are friendly ones.

Spiders - none of them are poisonous, none of them even bite and they are all quite small.

Midges - these are annoying but no more than that and they dont tend to hang out in the cities.

You can leave your bedroom window open all night and the chances are the only thing that will come in will be a moth or two. There isnt anything else that could come in.

The worst thing that could happen to you in the UK is you might, if you are extremely unlucky, get stung by an angry bee. But even our bees are big wusses when compared to bees elsewhere in the world. They are generally non-aggressive and just get on with doing their own thing.

You can even swim in any of our coastal seas perfectly safely - theres nothing in the seas around the UK that could hurt you. OK theres a few jellyfish but not the real badass type and also you’d have to be insane to want to swim in most of our seas for most of the year (brrrr) but the principle still stands.

Thats why I love our animals and bugs - they are the friendliest, least offensive bunch I’ve encountered anywhere in the world.

Sorry, I dont know why I felt the need to post this, just ignore me and carry on as before.

Now tell us about your loverly weather.

D’ye think this might be because you’ve had a longer stretch in which to kill all the offensive ones? No fair on the headstarts, we’re killing them as fast as we can here in the States.