Contents

PENGUIN BOOKS

MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS

Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. In 1928 his family returned to England and in 1933 they went to live on the Continent. Eventually they settled on the island of Corfu, where they lived until 1939. During this time he made a special study of zoology, and kept a large number of the local wild animals as pets. In 1945 he joined the staff of Whipsnade Park as a student keeper. In 1947 he financed, organized, and led his first animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons. This was followed by a second expedition in 1948 and a third in 1949, this time to British Guiana. He has also made expeditions to Paraguay, Argentina and Sierra Leone. In 1962 he and his wife went to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya to film a TV series, Two in the Bush, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Film Unit. In 1958 he founded the Jersey Zoological Park, of which he is the director, and in 1964 he founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. Gerald Durrell's other books include The Overloaded Ark, The Bafut Beagles, Encounters With Animals, The Drunken Forest, Three Singles to Adventure, A Zoo in My Luggage. The Whispering Land, Menagerie Manor, Birds, Beasts and Relatives, Fillets of Plaice, Catch Me a Colobus, Beasts in My Belfry, The Talking Parcel, The Stationary Ark, Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons and Garden of the Gods.

MY FAMILY

AND

OTHER ANIMALS

Gerald Durrell

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

“As You Like It”

PENGUIN BOOKS

Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondswotth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books, 621 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Hooks Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L.3R IB4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland, New Zealand

First published in Great Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis 1956

Published in Penguin Hooks in Great Britain 1959 Reprinted 1960, 1961. 1962, 1963 (twice), 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967 1968, 1969, 1970 (twice),

1971 (twice) 1972, 1973 (twice), 1974 (twice), 197; (twice), 1976, 1977, 1978 (twice), 1979 (twice), 198c (twice), 1981 (twice)

First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1957

Viking Compass Edition published 1963 Reprinted 1965, 1965 (twice) 1966 (twice), 1967, 1968 (twice), 1969 (twice), 1970 (twice),

1971 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975

Published in Penguin Books in the United States of America 1977 Reprinted 1977, 1978, 1980

Copyright Gerald M. Durrell, 1956 All rights reserved

ISBN o 14 00.1399 7

Library of Congress catalog card number: 57-6436

Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd,

Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Monotype Garamond

Two excerpts from this book appeared in Mademoiselle magazine

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition

that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be rent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise

circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

To

My

Mother

Contents

The Speech for the Defence