Part two

Chapter 7 - The Daffodil - Yellow Villa

Chapter 8 - The Tortoise Hills

Characters:
  • Theodore
  • Margo
  • Leslie
  • Michael
  • Gerry
  • Mother
  • Roger
  • Madame Cyclops
  • Zapotec
  • Lugaretzia
  • Jonquil
  • Durant
  • Melanie
  • Larry
The mountains behind the villa were full of tortoises.
Once, Gerry and Roger saw a tortoise coming out of the ground.
Suddenly the hills became covered with them.
There were all different
Gerry collected 35 specimens in two hours.
After the tortoises had their first meal they started acting "romantically".
The male tortoises would fight for the female tortoises doing battles.
These fights interested Gerry and Roger.
The female would pick a winner and Jerry and Roger would follow the happy couple on their honeymoon.
The tortoises would procreate in a very inefficient way, even Gerry had to help.
Gerry got intimate with a female tortoise and named her Madame Cyclops.
Madame Cyclops laid 9 eggs. 
Jerry took an egg to add it to his collection.
The villa was filled of Larry's friends afterwards.
The first one to arrive was "Zapotec", a poet. 
He would talk and drink a lot as well as try to flirt with every woman on the villa, even Lugaretzia.
The next visitors were three artist, Jonquil, Durant and Michael.
Michael was allergic to several things. One of his allergies were horses.
Once Michael got very bad because Mother tucked a horse-rug under his chin, what affected him.
Then arrived Melanie, Countess de Torro. 
She had had erysipelas, so she lost all her hair.
Mother didn't like her and asked Larry to send her away.
Larry didn't like her too, but he wanted to study her at close hand.
They asked Theodore to give them his opinion about it and she end up staying.
Afterwards Theodore told a story about the King of Greek, when he visited Corfu.
The King went to see a show about the Battle of Thermopylae and in the fight scene a real fight began.

The King end up loving the show because he found it very realistic. 
Opinion:

I think this Chapter is a very interesting one, because of the several things that happen in it.
Is interesting to visualize the different kind of friends Larry has, as well as all situations happening.

This is one of my favorite chapters of this book and I would recommend to read the hole chapter as well.


Chapter 9 - The World in a Wall

Characters:
  • Gerry 
  • Larry
  • Lugaretzia
  • Roger
  • Margo
  • Leslie
  • Mother
  • Theodore
  • Spiro
  • The Belgian consul

At the beginning of the chapter Gerald is exploring the cracks in the wall.
Inside the cracks are many creatures, some of them are predators 
 others predators.
Gerry finds some black scorpions, they seem very interesting, so he 
captures a fat female scorpion with tiny babies clinging to her form and he decides to put her in a matchbox, thinking that nobody will notice them.
When he arrives at the villa he places the matchbox on the mantelpiece and forgets about it during the meal.
When they finish eating, Larry open the box and the scorpion sting him, screaming he throws the box and all scorpions spread on the table. The meal is a mess; all the family is trying to capture them, Roger get scared and bites Lugaretzia. 
Mother decides to hire a new french teacher.
The new teacher is the Belgian consul, he is an elegant man 
that loves cats.
Gerald does not like french classes.
Thursday Theodore visits the family to see the seaplane from Athens that lands near the villa.
Gerry likes to go around and explore with Theodore that is very intelligent. 
They spend the afternoon together and return home with jars, bottles and tubes full of wonderful fauna.

Opinion:

This is a very interesting chapter. I like how Gerald describe describes the animals and the situation, with all the details it is very easy to imagine what happens.


Chapter 10 - The Pageant of Fireflies
Characters (humans): 
  • Peter
  • Margo
  • Mother
  • Gerry
  • Larry

Characters (animals):

  • Ulysses
  • Roger
  • Place: House, small bay
  • Time: Summer
Summary:

  • Peter is his new tutor. He´s a tall, handsome young man from Oxford. When he arrived, Gerry thought his lessons were “painful to an extreme”, because they only saw about fractions and percentages, geological strata, and nouns, verbs, and adverbs. But then, Peter relaxed. To teach him English, he allowed Gerry to write something everyday. Gerry didn´t want a diary because he already kept one, but decided to write a book. Each chapter of his book ended epically (Mum being attacked by a jaguar, for example)
  • Peter and Margo stroll in the garden to look at flowers. It´s the first time Margo seems interested in gardening.
  • The Bug House: A room on the first floor to keep Gerry´s animals. Here, there´s a bat Gerry stuffed by himself. It decayed, and had to throw it away. Peter told him he could teach him taxidermy. 
  • Tried to catch another bat- Failed, but catched a baby owl, which he named Ulysses.
  • Roger tried to be Friends with Ulysses, but the owl scratched his muzzle
  • Family baths at night. They go to a small bay by using The Sea Cow (a boat). Porpoises rise around Gerry near that bay.
  • Moonlight picnic in this bay:
    • Theodore was invited
    • Mother uses an ugly bathing-costume. Roger can´t recognize her with it
    • There are a lot of fireflies and porpoises

Chapter 11 - The Enchanted Archipelago

This chapters begins with the family deciding to buy a new motor boat which they named the sea cow in which they travelled instead of using the streets.
They discover some mini islands were Gerry stats enjoying too much to be since there he is able to collect plenty of marine wildlife and plants for his pond.
Later on the entire family gets bored of waiting so long for Gerry to fool around in the island so they stopped going.
Due to this adversity, Gerry had the bright idea of using his upcoming birthday to get a boat of his own and some other useful tools and presents along the way. Therefore he wrote specific lists for each member o0f the family so getting his desired presents would have a better chance of success.
He asked the most things from mother because he knew she would most probably buy everything she had on her list. Then he prepared a list of books for Larry due to his inclination to literature and art. On the list made for Margo most of the possible presents could be found on her favorite stores, but in the case of Leslie it was different, this time he faced Leslie and requested him to build him a boat.
Time after they went on with the party and each of them decided to invite ten problem, but there was a minor issue because pretty much every single one of them invited 9 different people each with the exception of Theodore who received 5 separate invitations.
Later on, they go to the main square to buy the presents but also to leave Lugaretzia at the doctor so she can go along a procedure to remove her teeth.
The day of the party arrives and Spiro brings a previous butler from the royal family to help in the preparations. Meanwhile Leslie finishes the boat and after a long discussion including the other members of the family, they baptize the new addition as the Bootle bumtrincket. During the premiere of the small boat the former tutor at the time felled to the lake because the boat had some issues and the mastil got broken.

Leslie fixed the boat but during this time the party went on and all of the guest came, Gerry got two new dogs and pretty much everyone else got drunk.


Chapter 12 - The Woodcock Winter 


Characters:
  • Gerry 
  • Mother 
  • Leslie 
  • Larry 
  • Margo 
  • Spiro 
  • Lugaretzia. 
Location: 
  • Daffodil-yellow villa 
When: 
  • Summer/Winter 
Animals that appear in the chapter :
  • Roger
  • Widdle
  • Puke. 
Mother didin’t like the union between Margo and Peter. She said they were “too fond for one another”, that’s why she broke them up. Margo got really depressed. One day, she recieved a letter from Peter, which said that he would go back and look for her. Winter came and covered the villa with snow. And because it was hunting season, Leslie went to hunt sometimes. He brought one time a wild boar home. Leslie offers Larry to go hunting with him, but as always, Larry complains about the task and pulls his “I know it all” act. 
When they came home at night, Larry got really drunk and locked himself in his room. Early in the morning, Margo realized that the villa had caught fire. Everybody was panicking. Larry didn’t really understand why everyone was panicking, he thought that they were over reacting. He was also hangover and Margo noticed it. 

Opinion: 

 Gerrald Durrell’s Writing surprised me more every time I opened the book to read a new chapter. I find his writing very amusing and exellent because of it’s details.

Conversation 2

Characters: 
  • Gerry (didn’t speak) 
  • Mother 
  • Larry 
  • Leslie 
  • Roger 
  • Margo 
  • Puke 
  • Lugaretzia (mentioned) 
  • Aunt Hermione (mentioned) 
  • Uncle Stephen (mentioned) 
  • Aunt Mabel (mentioned) 
  • Henry (mentioned) 

Spring arrived at the island and the family spent most of its time on the veranda, eating, sleeping, reading, or arguing. Here, the whole family opened mails which Spiro brought to them. 
The mails mainly consisted of gun catalogues for Leslie, fashion magazines for Margo, animal journals for Jerry, books or letters from authors, artists or musicians for Larry and letters from relatives and seed catalogues for Mother. Occasionally, hey used to share bits of mails with the family. Mother read aunt Hermione’s letter out loud and it said that the doctors didn’t hold out much hope for her. Aunt Hermione also said in her letter that she wanted to go to Corfu and stay with them because the doctors advised a warm climate. 
Margo, Leslie and Larry strongly opposed to this idea and gave mother numerous excuses and reasons to not let aunt Hermione visit them, like telling her that they didn’t want her to come because she sang hymns, that they didn’t have room for her or that Mother was sick. In the end, Larry’s idea of moving to a smaller villa was taken and they moved. Like that, they were able to tell her that they had no room without lying. 

Opinion:

This chapter is really amusing and shows how different family members feel about aunt Hermione. I think this chapter is very funny because Larry and Leslie were ready to do anything to convince Mother that Aunt Hermione shouldn’t visit them. Gerry didn’t speak in this chapter but was present during the discussion.