Source A: The sound inside the hedge

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

I heard the hedge before I saw what was inside it. The sound was low and continuous, like a machine running in a room whose door I had not found. I was carrying empty seed trays along the allotment path. At first I looked towards the shed, where someone had been repairing a pump. Then the sun reached the leaves and the air above them seemed to break into moving pieces.

Bees. I said the word aloud, though nobody had asked me a question. A cluster hung from a branch, dark and rounded, with its surface continually becoming other surfaces as insects moved across one another. More turned through the light around it. I had expected a swarm to look like disorder. This had a shape, and that made it more remarkable and, to me, no less alarming.

I put the trays down slowly and moved back along the path. The experienced keeper who arrived later asked people to remain clear while she assessed the situation. Her calm was not a statement that nothing mattered. It was the manner of someone who knew which details required attention. I watched from the marked distance, ashamed of wanting both a closer view and a wall between us.

The sound changed when the wind moved. It seemed to gather in one place, then spread through the leaves. Individual bees were visible for an instant before joining the moving surface again. I could not follow a single journey. The cluster invited the eye to see one creature where there were many, but every attempt to make it a single thing was undone by its edges.

A child beside me asked whether they were angry. I nearly said no, then realised I did not know how to translate that question into anything I could honestly answer. I said we should listen to the keeper and leave them space. The child looked satisfied with this practical response. I was still trying to find a sentence large enough for what I felt.

When I returned for the trays, the path had been closed and another route marked. I used it without complaint. From farther away, the hedge looked almost ordinary again. I could still hear the low sound beneath the leaves. Fear had not cancelled fascination, and fascination had not made approaching sensible. I carried the trays to the shed, aware that the garden contained lives which did not need to become understandable to me before I gave them room.

Source B: From H is for Hawk — Helen Macdonald

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 19–20).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about mixed feelings during a close encounter with an animal.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.