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9 Durrell’s World

of Animals

I can read...
I can read...

Read the extract taken from Gerald Durrell’s autobiography ‘My Family
and Other Animals’. Durrell was an expert in studying animals. Durrell
began to collect and keep animals as pets. When he was ten years old.

The crumbling wall that surrounded the garden alongside the house was a rich
hunting ground for me. It was an ancient brick wall that had been plastered

over, but now this outer skin was green with moss, bulging and sagging with
the damp of many winters. The whole surface was an intricate map of

cracks, some several inches wide, others as fine as hair. Here and

there large pieces had dropped off and revealed the rows of
rose-pink bricks lying beneath.

The inhabitants of the wall were a mixed lot, and

they were divided into day and night workers,
the hunters and the hunted. At night, the

toads and geckos were the hunters. Their
prey was the population of stupid,

absent-minded crane-flies, moths of
all shapes and sizes and rotund

beetles hurrying with their night’s

work. By day it was difficult to
tell the difference between

the prey and the predators.
Everything seemed to feed

off everything else.

autobiography — an account of a person’s life written by that person; intricate —
complicated; Inhabitant — a person or animal that lives in or occupies a place; crane-
fly — a flying insect with very long legs; rotund — large and plump

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