Tiger Feat

Although I worry that I shouldn't, I bloody love zoos.  To be honest, I could probably write a blog just about them, but I won't, because, well, that's not what you want to hear about really, is it?  And after all, surely the next best thing to going to a zoo is reading about them and the amazing people that run them.

'We Bought a Zoo'
by Benjamin Mee
(Harper, 2008/9)

I've just finished 'We Bought a Zoo', the unusual story of how journalist Benjamin Mee and his family ended up owning Dartmoor Zoological Park in Devon.  At the start of this story, Mee, his wife Katherine and two young children have just moved to France and are settling into a new life abroad, quite literally building themselves a home in the sunshine.  But then Mee hears the call of the wild.  His sister sends him details of a UK zoo that has just come on the market and the opportunity is irresistible.  Benjamin, his mum and siblings decide to follow their hearts and buy the failing zoo.  But can they overcome years of neglect, Houdini-like animals and cold hearted bankers to get Dartmoor off the endangered list?

This really is an enchanting story of passionate commitment and, in many ways, living a dream, but if you were expecting a perky, happy-go-lucky tale, think again.  While this book is very charming and down-to-earth, there is also personal tragedy at its heart.  Six months after buying the zoo, Mr Mee's wife, Katherine, dies.  As a reader, I appreciated the honesty of Mr Mee's writing about what happened and it makes his work for the zoo seem all the more incredible.

Despite the tough subject matter, this book is written in a flowing and conversational style which makes it relatively easy to read.  Part of me feels that it could do with some work in places.  For example, some sentences seem to go on like boa constrictors, so long that you can't remember their beginnings, and periodically words are repeated within lines, which is quite distracting for a language nerd like me.  I would've liked more structure too, but I suspect that this book was written around the many other duties which keep a Zoo Director busy and might have been rushed as an additional opportunity to bring more money into the park.  As such, I'm not going to nitpick about what is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, this is a charming and thought-provoking book that I would recommend to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a zoo.  But it is just the beginning.  Like me, other readers will want to know what happens next, more about the animals, whether Mee ever got his zebras, what it's like to actually run a working zoo rather than just prepare it for opening.  I'm lucky, I've actually visited Dartmoor Zoological Park and seen what's happening, but even I can't go as often as I would like.  So while quite a few people will be getting copies of this as Christmas presents, what I really want this year is a sequel, perhaps even a series of sequels.  Now that would be animal magic.