A Zoo in My Luggage
By: Gerald Durrell / Narrated By: Rupert Degas
Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
Charming account with funny animal stories—if you can get past animals being ripped from their homes/habitats
If you can get past that, the stories of animals being captured with nooses or smoked out of their tree homes, then you’re in for a delightful time with A Zoo in My Luggage which chronicles Durrell’s six-month journey in Cameroon to get “specimens” for his zoo. If he wasn’t such a lover of animals, I might’ve balked at the whole Zoo concept, but Durrell really wants the best for his animals. He once collected animals for other zoos but always found it hard to give up the bonds made after spending so much time caring for the animals as much as any parent might care for their child. Hence, his decision to keep all his new animals and start his own zoo, hopefully postponing the extinction of a few species in the bargain.
The biggest stumbling block of the audiobook is the truly fantastic narration. Why? Because the people of Cameroon speak a form of pidgin English that is completely and unutterably baffling to the Western ear. Rupert Degas does a simply marvelous job so that none of the lilt or inflection of any speech is lost, but boy! I had to slow it to x1 speed to catch the rhythm of it all. If you can get through that and catch the rhythm for yourself, you’ll be delighted. There’s a pattern to the speech and, by the end, I was listening most calmly. Plus there’s the humor and wryness that Degas delivers so well. Durrell’s animals get into many scrapes, and it takes a saintly person to handle it all and not lose tempers or a sense of humor.
Get ready for Georgina the baboon as friend and watchdog, not to mention wily scamp extraordinaire. Get ready for stories of chimps behaving coyly and frogs unwittingly being set free, much to everyone’s horror. There are stories of animals, stories of people. And the people surrounding Durrell, especially his over-the-top host, are conveyed in witty prose.
And there’s the journey back to England, and the search to find a place for the zoo… because Durrell collected animal first, thought about the physical space last. So there are some tense moments.
Though I had a problem with the manner in which the animals were acquired, the care and attention they received pacified me. All the animals were loved dearly, and A Zoo in My Luggage is a fine story of the founding of the Durrell Wildlife Park, now Jersey Zoo.
Quirky humans, quirky animals—what more could you ask for?
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