Book description
'In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round,
hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro
independently like radar dishes . . . it was Lewis Carroll's
Jabberwocky come to life . . . one of the most incredible creatures
I had ever been privileged to meet.'
The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar is home to
woodlice the size of golf balls, moths the size of Regency fans and
the Aye-Aye, a type of lemur held by local superstion to be an omen of
death. But when Gerald Durrell visited the island, the destruction of
the forests meant that the Aye-Aye and many other creatures were in
danger of extinction.
Told with his unique sense of humour and inimitable charm, Gerald
Durrell's The Aye Aye and I is the final adventure from one
Britain's best loved conservationists.
Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He returned to
England in 1928 before settling on the island of Corfu with his family.
In 1945 he joined the staff of Whipsnade Park as a student keeper, and
in 1947 he led his first animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons.
He later undertook numerous further expeditions, visiting Paraguay,
Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Mauritius, Assam and Madagascar. His
first television programme,
Two in the Bush
which documented his travels to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya
was made in 1962; he went on to make seventy programmes about his trips
around the world. He was awarded the OBE in 1982. Encouraged to write
about his life's work by his brother, Durrell published his first
book,
The Overloaded Ark
, in 1953. It soon became a bestseller and he went on to write
thirty-six other titles, including
My Family and Other Animals
,
The Bafut Beagles
,
Encounters with Animals
,
The Whispering Land
,
Menagerie Manor
,
The Amateur Naturalist
and
The Aye-Aye and I
. Gerald Durrell died in 1995.
