"Until I brought friends back from school I didn't realise that most people didn't have baby lions in their bedrooms when they were sick, or bring parrots into the house so they wouldn't catch cold."
Chester Zoo is counted among the top 10 zoos in the world and, with over 11,000 animals and 400 species, it is the most visited wildlife attraction in Britain. Unlike other zoos that owe their existence to philanthropists, explorers, or big game hunters, Chester Zoo was the brainchild of one working-class man with a dream he had nurtured since he was a boy: to build a zoo without bars. June Mottorshead was four years old when her father, George, moved his family to Upton, two miles outside Chester, to begin the process of turning his dream into a reality. With no other children around to play with—her sister Muriel was 10 years older—June's friends became the animals. Her closest companion was an orphaned chimpanzee which she hand-reared, and for six years the two were inseparable. June soon became the poster girl for Chester Zoo, and photographs of her cuddling lion clubs, head-butting a goat, or opening the beak of a pelican soon graced the front pages of British newspapers. She was 13 when war was declared in 1939 and, with the backbone of the staff headed for the front, it fell to June to take over as head keeper. Keeping the zoo running while the war waged was no easy task. Despite rationing, the animals had to be fed, and all of them—penguins, elephants, tigers, lions, kangaroos, and polar bears—needed to be moved inside as soon as the air raid siren sounded. June, now in her 80s, is the guardian of her family's legacy, and in this book she tells the wonderfully evocative and fascinating story of a working-class family with a very unusual home.
