All Creatures great and smallfor Sussex man's adventures

Since his retirement, Bill has been busy writing for a number of popular animal magazines, including Practical Reptile Keeping, Small Furry Pets, Cage and Aviary Birds and Popular Fish Keeping.

Now, following in the footsteps of the late James Heriot, he has turned author. His first book Tales from The Reptile House is about to hit the bookshelves.

Bill now divides his time between homes in the South of France and Andalusia in southern Spain, where he has set up a sanctuary for former pet tortoises following the introduction of a new law last year forbidding people from keeping tortoises as pets.

This has resulted in many of them being released back into the wild with no immediate knowledge of how to fend for themselves.

After finding the injured victims of passing vehicles on the road Bill nurses them back to health. He even glues their shells back together again using Superglue.

Since moving to France he also found himself responsible for setting up France’s first snail sanctuary.

Humour and eccentricity abound in the book, in which Bill combines practical tips on keeping reptiles with a series of personal anecdotes – many of which are the result of 19 years spent working in a Scottish zoo. He describes the animal collection at Pittencrieff Park as ‘his own private Eden’.

When it came to travelling in comfort, Bill writes that he quickly discovered being accompanied by a tarantula always meant that he got a seat on the train. He tells the tale of a Bosc’s monitor lizard with a weak bladder – to say nothing of saving a one-eyed gecko just before it went for a spin in the washing machine and rescuing a chameleon that literally stopped the traffic.

Tales from The Reptile House will be released shortly as part of the Practical Pets series available from pet shops and online.

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