Fauna and Family
Gerald Durrell
Language: English
Pages: 515
ISBN: 0671247298
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
... Gerald Durrell, the distinguished naturalist and founder of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, writes about his adventures with friends (human and animal), his family (including his brother Lawrence Durrell), and a whole army of welcome and unwelcome visitors to the enchanted island of Corfu, on which the Durrell family lived in the halcyon days before the Second World War.
For the young Gerald Durrell it was above all a treasure house of exotic creatures which he could collect, watch, cherish and study. But it was not always a tranquil household. The interests of the animals frequently collided with those of the humans, and Gerald's descriptions of the birds, lizards, and assorted fauna are among his best and most memorable anecdotes, as are the stories of exotic visitors -- a mysterious Indian, a supercilious aristocrat, an amorous Turkish gentelman, a foul-mouthed sea captain, and many others who distrubed the Durrells' domestic peace and contributed to their amusement.
for years, and had the luggage shifted outside onto the quay almost before anyone could draw breath. Then he borrowed the customs man’s piece of chalk and marked all the baggage himself, so there would be no further confusion. ‘Well, I won’t say good-bye but only au revoir,’ mumbled Theodore, shaking hands precisely with each of us. ‘I hope we shall have you back with us… um… very soon.’ ‘Good-bye, good-bye,’ fluted Kralefsky, bobbing from one person to the other. ‘We shall so look forward to
obtaining a rock, you turned it over very carefully and found a host of sea life underneath it which would keep us both happily absorbed for a quarter of an hour or so, till George realized with a start that this was not getting on with our map of the world. This little bay became one of my favourite haunts, and nearly every afternoon while the family were having their siesta, Roger and I would make our way down through the breathless olive groves, vibrating with the cries of the cicadas, and
him to somebody. They’d never be able to carry on like that in the Church of England.’ Eventually, however, the whole thing became a sort of game. When Margo and I swam across, we would take some cigarettes over for the monk and he would come flying down the stone steps, shaking his fist and threatening us with the wrath of God, and then, having done his duty, as it were, he would hitch up his robes, squat on the wall, and with great good humour smoke the cigarettes we had brought him.
go so much farther a field. Why couldn’t I have it for Christmas, I asked? Because, Mother replied, firstly, they were too expensive, and secondly, there were not any babies available at that precise time. But if they were too expensive, I argued, why couldn’t I have one as a Christmas and birthday present? I would willingly forgo all other presents in lieu of a donkey. Mother said she would see, which I knew from bitter experience generally meant that she would forget about the matter as rapidly
pursuing a large and indignant king snake along a length of dry stone wall. No sooner had we dismantled one section of it than the snake would ease himself fluidly along into the next section, and by the time we had rebuilt the section we had pulled down, it would take half an hour or so to locate him again in the jigsaw of rocks. Finally we had to concede defeat and we were now making our way home to tea, thirsty, sweating, and covered with dust. As we rounded an elbow of the road, I glanced