Book Review: A Bevy of Beasts/Beasts in My Belfry

“They say that a child who aspires to be an engine driver very rarely grows up to fill that role in life.  If this is so, then I am an exceptionally lucky person, for at the age of two I made up my mind quite firmly and unequivocally that the only thing I wanted to do was study animals.  Nothing else interested me.”

I was in high school when I first stumbled across the name of Gerald Durrell, printed on the spine of a book in the school library.  I plucked it off the shelf, and in many ways I never put it back. 

Durrell has since become one of my favorite authors, a naturalist who wrote with crackling wit and endless humor as he describes – in the course of the thirty-odd books that he wrote - his life with animals.  In My Family and Other Animals, he took his readers back to his childhood in Greek island of Corfu; in The Overloaded Ark, the reader joins him in his first expedition as an animal collector in Cameroon.  It was that first book of his that I’ve always enjoyed the most however.  Its title is A Bevy of Beasts (sometimes sold as Beasts in My Belfry), and it describes a teenaged Durrell fulfilling his lifelong dream, which was the same as mine – becoming a zookeeper.

Having finally pushed the patience of his family (especially his long-suffering brother, the novelist Lawrence Durrell) to the limit with his animal-keeping antics, the young Durrell decides to seek more professional experience working with animals.  He winds up as a keeper at Whipsnade, the Zoological Society of London’s safari park out in the country.   Thrown in with the lions (well, not literally) on his first day, Durrell begins a crash-course in zookeeping under the tutelidge of semi-competent keepers. 

The reader follows Durrell as he moves from section to section during his stay, joining him as he cares for tigers, polar bears, wildebeest, tapirs, and a gentlemanly giraffe who has a goat for a best friend.  Durrell races around the countryside in pursuit of escaped deer, gets nearly trampled by a furious zebra stallion, and barely escapes a mauling from she-bears temporarily robbed of their cubs to help a photographer with his story (for which he is tipped the princely sum of two pounds ten… whatever that is).  Along the way, Durrell shares interesting facts about the animals, both natural, historical, and fictional.  No matter your interests, he has a story for you.

Whipsnade provided the setting in which a young man with an interest in animals began to turn that interest into something more.  His experiences there, along with his adventures as an animal collector in Africa and South America (detailed in many other excellent books), shaped Durrell’s views on zoos and what they could mean in terms of conservation.  Durrell envisioned zoos that devoted themselves wholly to their animals, eschewed giraffes and lions in favor of captive breeding of the most endangered species, and integrated themselves closely with conservation programs in the range countries of those species.  Many of these views were controversial at the time and led to Durrell being shunned by the old guard of the zoo community.  Durrell went on to prove them wrong by starting his own zoo.

A Bevy of Beasts is a highly enjoyable book for anyone interested in animals or zoos.  It would have special meaning, I think, to any young person hoping to take their first tentative steps into the profession.  Much like You Belong In a Zoo!, by Peter Brazaitis, A Bevy of Beasts is the story of a young man – one who no one ever thought would amount to much – setting off to follow their dreams and, in turn, making a tremendous difference for the world’s threatened wildlife.  

A Bevy of Beasts at Amazon.com