Having had a fair number of adventures this month featuring animals, I wanted to begin this missive by likening ours to the life of a famous animal presenter. Steve Irwin would have been ideal but he came to an upsetting end. Rolf Harris…ooh no. Perhaps Jonny Morris, but does anyone remember him? Interesting point in itself, I thought, so in case anyone does want to know:
Morris had an early career as a violinist, performing with his cello-playing father. In the 1970s, he was the voice of Dial A Story – long before YouTube and Peppa Pig, children could ring 150 and listen to a bedtime story (or 160 for a record – remember Dial-A-Disc?). Morris was awarded an OBE in 1984 and died in 1999, leaving his house to his Animal Magic co-host, Terry Nutkins. So now you know. Oh, and he was terrified of spiders.
One of my heroes on so many levels is the late Gerald Durrell, who wrote a series of utterly fascinating books about his life with animals, including his early years on my beloved island Corfu. My hippy friend Chris lives in Kalami, the tiny village where the British Durrell family settled in 1935 and where Gerry spent his childhood studying the local fauna and flora, and his very entertaining family. Two television series have been based on their lives, filmed on location in Corfu; and The White House – the building in which older brother Larrie (Laurence Durrell of the higher-brow Prospero’s Cell and Bitter Lemons) spent a chunk of his life – now operates as a rather upmarket restaurant, where I spent a very pleasant evening enjoying fine cuisine (a world away from the meals Widow Durrell had to scrape from the landscape to feed her family), having persuaded Chris into an unaccustomed shirt and shoes for the occasion – something Mrs Durrell had to do with her feral son from time to time. Sadly all my attempts to interest Chris in the historical aspect of his local heritage have failed, and My Family and Other Animals lies forlornly unread on a shelf.
But back to my own recent zoological exploits. We’ve had a fair few snake experiences at home, including a very long, dark blue dude slithering across Paul’s feet as he worked at his desk, and the one under the car that saw him wearing nothing but boxer shorts and brandishing a bright pink broom trying to separate the serpent from our disabled cat, who was also under the van.
The latest episode began with a bird in the bedroom just as Paul turned 50. Perhaps that needs clarification: we’d been out for dinner to celebrate his half-century the evening before the big day, and whilst the bubbles consumed rendered me comatose before midnight, Paul was awoken just minutes into his 51st year by an odd whooshing sound, which transpired to be a lost sparrow zooming around above my sleeping form. It took Paul several attempts to alert the bird to an open window and encourage it out.
Next day, Paul relaxed into an afternoon playing with his new guitar toys while I caught up on some paperwork. All peaceful…until our little dog starting barking maniacally. Now, Evie’s not been well lately and we’ve been less inclined to stop her barking, but this was incessant, insistent, and infuriating. I stormed out of my office to see what the fuss was about and discovered all four of our cats in a little square, gazing astonished at a very live snake hissing at them. I screamed for Paul, who asked whether it was poisonous. A quick Google of blunt nosed viper images proved this was the case. Paul mentioned that he had no idea how to catch a snake. “People put them in a pillowcase” I recalled. “How?” That, I didn’t recall.
Both of us barefoot and in swimwear (we have no aircon), with four cats and a sick dog all intent on attacking the lethal reptile, the pink broom was once again employed to scare the cats to safety, and to cut a long story, involving a bucket, the broom and some swiftly located wellies and clothing, the snake was persuaded into a firewood basket, which we then carried via the broom slipped between the handles and transported, like an Egyptian litter, as far from the house as we dared travel in our outlandish garb, Evie all the while snapping at the basket.
Three days later, I returned to the dumped basket to retrieve the firewood. No snake in sight. It’ll be a tale to recall in front of the fire in a few months…how Paul spent his 50th Birthday.
