The Chessboard Fields

Gerald Durrell devoted a whole chapter of My Family and Other Animals to these reclaimed Veneitian salt pans. In Gerry's day, these fields were intensively cultivated with fruit and vegetables. A walk along the paths between the fields today reveals similar cultivation as well as many wild birds. The chessboard fields first appear in the chapter of the same name where they are described as bordered by an “…intricate pattern of narrow waterways that had once been salt pans in the Venetian days. Each little patch of earth, framed with canals, was richly cultivated and green with crops of maize, potatoes, figs, and grapes.” As the chapter progresses, Gerald evokes a dazzling world where it is possible to see a multitude of creatures – terrapins, snakes, frogs, snipe, dragonflies; in Gerry’s miniature chessboard-field world, the air and water are literally buzzing with wildlife.
For Gerry though, his fields teemed with life and colour; they harboured exotic creatures that I longed to see and were the stage for a multitude of colourful characters who interacted with the 10-year-old Gerry in a way that seemed impossible back in England.