The Avocado Drive Zoo: At Home with My Family and the Creatures We've Loved

From the creator and producer of the hit TV series The Waltons and Falcon Crest comes an amusing account of his family's involvement with animals. The story starts in Manhattan, where Hamner and his wife, Jane, owned two cocker spaniels, which were soon joined by a dozen box turtles picked up on a rural road in Virginia. When the family moved to their new home on Avocado Drive in the Hollywood Hills of California, the menagerie increased dramatically. Over the years there were dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, opossums (and, briefly, an alligator, soon given to the Los Angeles Zoo). Otherwise unflappable, Jane could not bear to turn any animal away. During a hot, dry spell she provided water and food for a pair of coyotes. Another time, she put out food for a mouse that appeared in the family's beach house. Hamner, however, confesses that he never liked spiders until he worked on the film script for Charlotte's Web. Enlivened with plenty of anecdotes about the author's early script-writing career and his brood's activities in California, this memoir provides a sweet, humorous take on family life. (Apr.)