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.
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But lurked inside the cardboard box and made angry chittering noises at me. When I tried to investigate her bedroom she fastened onto my forefinger like a tiger and I had great difficulty in getting her to let go. Eventually I managed to get her off and, holding her firmly by the scruff of the neck, investigated the box. I found there, to my infinite delight, eight babies, each the size of a hazelnut and as pink as a cyclamen bud. Delighted with Esmerelda’s happy event I showered her with.
To be dying a lot this year.’ At that moment, Leslie, carrying the air rifle, strode out of the house. ‘Have I killed enough?’ he inquired. The next ten minutes were fraught with emotion. Mrs Vadrudakis said she had never been so upset in her life and that we were all fiends in human shape. Mother kept saying that she was sure Leslie had not meant to cause offence and that, anyway, she was sure the sparrows had not suffered. Leslie, loudly and belligerently, went on repeating that it was a lot.
Father had been a different caste. The trouble with you, Lawrence, is that you have no sense of the dramatic. Think vhat a poem I could have vritten, “The Untouchable Banquet”.’ ‘What’s an untouchable?’ Margo asked Leslie in a penetrating whisper. ‘It’s a disease, like leprosy,’ he explained solemnly. ‘My God!’ said Margo dramatically. ‘I hope he’s sure he hasn’t got it. How does he know his father isn’t infected?’ ‘Margo, dear,’ said Mother quellingly. ‘Go and stir the lentils, will you?’.
A couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped round two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a briefcase containing his clothes. Mother’s luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a.
Interesting.’ ‘I can’t care what it is, as long as we get back to the car,’ said Mother. But we were swept along, in the opposite direction to the car, and eventually pushed out to join a vast crowd assembled in the main square of the town. I asked an elderly peasant woman near me what was happening, and she turned to me, her face lit up with pride. ‘It is Saint Spiridion, kyria,’ she explained. ‘Today we may enter the church and kiss his feet.’ Saint Spiridion was the patron saint of the.