Strange Things Happened On My Way To The Zoo, by Mike Thomas

NOT many people can say they have owned a zoo, and there is probably only one who has also been the proprietor of a seal sanctuary.

Not a kangaroo in sight as Rolf Harris opens Newquay Zoo's penguin pool, with former owner Mike Thomas on his right.

Mike Thomas, has run both – as well as being a leading light in the hunt for the Beast of Bodmin Moor – and has written a highly entertaining book about his experiences.

Strange Things Happened On My Way To The Zoo, published by Alison Hodge at £7.95, tells of the heartaches, hard work, precarious financial positions but sometimes great fun, he has experienced in Cornwall.

Mike left his childhood home in Wales to teach, just off London's Old Kent Road. His first visit to Cornwall came when his brother got married here, and Mike decided to stay when he was offered a teaching post in Falmouth.

Eventual resignation, marriage and a period transforming old milk churns into bar stools followed until he met Ken Jones, a former miner also from Wales, who had established a rescue centre for seals, first at St Agnes and later at Gweek. Ken, who had almost bankrupted himself setting up the Gweek Seal Sanctuary, commissioned Mike to design an exhibition about marine life, pollution and the care of wildlife. On his retirement he sold the sanctuary to Mike and other shareholders, and during the first winter in charge they rescued 50 grey seals.

His time there was not without personal sacrifice as on one occasion, while holding a fish beside the pool, a blind seal named Dracula took both the food on offer and Mike's hand. Driven to hospital for treatment to torn fingers a nurse asked him how it had happened – "A seal ate them," Mike, who now lives in Falmouth replied. Things got worse before they got better, but, with his new wife Jenny, Mike turned Newquay into one of the best small zoos in the country. The happiest decade of my life" is how Mike Thomas describes his 10 years' ownership of Newquay Zoo.

"Operating a zoo was running a business unlike any other. It was not possible to turn off the lights, lock the gates and go home," recalls Mike in the book.

"It needed 24hours a day, 365 days a year of care and supervision."

They overcame the difficulties and ended up ten years later with 45 staff, 250,000 visitors a year and money in the bank.