Phil Drabble, well-known as a naturalist who writes and broadcasts about the countryside, was born in a town on the edge of the industrial Black Country.

Despite his unpromising surroundings, he was fired by the same nostalgia for simple things and quiet places that lies deep in in most of us, whether we are town or country-bred.

As an only child, he wandered over the the spoil banks of worked-out coal mines, bird nesting and catching butterflies.

He caught newts in 'swags' - the mining subsidence pools - and enlivened breakfast by keeping them in a glass bowl on the dining-room table. Because he couldn't escape to the country as much as he would have liked, he brought what he could of the countryside to him. He tamed rats and hedgehogs and squirrels and stoats. Later, a badger lived in the stable and came into the house - and he kept a weasel in his meatsafe.

This book tells the story of the animals and birds that he kept, and the fascinating facts they taught him. It also tells a story that might have happened to almost any of us - the story of a boy, fired by forces stronger than himself, which helped him to escape from urban life to eam his living doing pleasant things he'd always dreamed about.