My Family and Other Animals
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.
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