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The truth is that she was always much more forgiving of animals than people…Her sympathy for the underdog–or the underwasp, underrat, undercat, undersnail, underbird, underspider, undermouse, undergecko, undercentipede–was limitless. In the depths of a gloomy London winter she would trudge to the park with a bag of snacks–stale bread specially sautéed in drippings–for the poor freezing seagulls and ducks. At the height of a Provencal summer she would fill a shallow bowl with water, put it on the terrace, and watch, transfixed, as the poor thirsty wasps hovered just above the surface to take a restorative sip or two. Dogs and cats slept in her bed, baby birds were fed warm milk with eyedroppers, spiders were fished out of baths, and a colony or red ants, which feasted on honey and scurried around inside a special box with a glass lid, lived on the kitchen table in London for many years.
