A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE

Durrell's followers (The Overloaded Ark, The Drunken Forest, The Bafut Beagles, My Family and Other Animals) know how entertaining he can make his travels, collecting, encounters and the animals, and this account of his trip to West Africa to bring back specimens for his own zoo is a companion equal to the others. With his wife Jacquie, the reptile-loving Bob and his undismayed secretary Sophie, he is off -- to face a hippo, be defeated by a python, to buy ""beef"", and to visit again with the irrepressible Fon of Bafut. There are many sessions in the dancing house, exhausting and agonizing attempts to take moving pictures of rare species, tedious schedules of special feedings, outstanding personalities among his captives, and then there's the anxious trip home. Once there -- where to establish a zoo turns out to be the most vexing problem of all -- but there's a happy ending when quarters turn up on the Isle of Jersey.