This book is an autobiographical account of five years in the
childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell when he lived with his
family lived on the island of Corfu. Apart from Gerald (the
youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family
comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and
diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. The
procession of animals includes toads, and tortoises, bats and
butterflies, scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses
and rose-beetles, Ulysses, the Scops owl, Quasimodo the pigeon, the
puppies Widdle and Puke, and of course the magpies. The family is
fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro, and Gerald is
mentored by the polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides who provides his
education in natural history.
