Weasel in My Meatsafe

by Phil Drabble, Mick Manning (Illustrator)

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.

Jacket Design and Illustration by Mick Manning

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published May 24, 1979

About the author

Philip Percy Cooper Drabble OBE was an English countryman, author and television presenter. Brought up in the Black Country, he later lived in – and wrote mostly about – the countryside of north Worcestershire and at Abbots Bromley in East Staffordshire, where he created a nature reserve.

Reviews

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

great stories and tricks about catching and taming wild creatures. Not for the faint hearted. I didn't realise the myth about unmated female ferrets dying was such a recent belief! Loved many of the descriptions.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did I get this for the title? 100% But it surprised me in being so interesting and full of passion about British nature. Its definitely not for the faint hearted as animal welfare practices have come a long since the 50s when this was originally released

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Phil Drabble (apparently he presented One Man and his Dog) and the only reason I picked up this book in a second hand sale was the title. How could you not want to read about the weasel in his meat safe? This is not some strange euphemism. He did keep a weasel in his meat safe. Two in fact, at different times.

This is a child of its time, written in the 50s about his life with wild animals, back in the day it was OK to pinch young wild animals from the countryside to raise as kind of pets. And there is also the brutality of the countryside. To be fair, nature itself can be pretty brutal at times. These days kids could not do what he did, which is good, but I do think we are growing too far estranged from nature. And I actually liked him better than Gerald Durrell. His stories are often about being abroad collecting as many animals as possible in the hope enough survive the journey home to be put in a zoo. Drabble himself writes about how he doesn't see his animals as a zoo. He wants to tame them to build that trust, to learn about the animals. But they are not specimens to be goggled at.

So there are chapters about different animals including the weasels! Oh dear old Teasey the weasel. There are the newts he gathered as a boy, the orphaned jackdaw he raised as a schoolboy. The birds and animals that were only with him for a short time before heading off to the wild - but so wonderful to think he knows that connection to local populations of jackdaws and owls. But it was a little sad when some left him. Not as sad as Lorna the seal in Seal Morning... then there are some of the animals he and his wife didn't manage to save or rear. The observed animal behaviour. There is a real delight in the natural world in this. Even if he was desperate to try his hand at raising every kind of animal.

[Wetdryvac Wetdryvac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good fun.