What kind of Navy officer sits on his ship in the middle of the Mediterranean dreaming of gerbils?Thats the question that Holly Robinson sets out to answer in this warm and rollicking memoir of life with her father, the worlds most famous gerbil czar.Starting with a few pairs of gerbils housed for curiositys sake in the familys garage, Donald Robinsons obsession with the pocket kangaroo developed into a lifelong passion and second career. Soon the Annapolis-trained Navy commander was breeding gerbils and writing about them for publications ranging from the ever-bouncy Highlights for Children to the erudite Science News. To support his burgeoning business, the family eventually settled on a remote hundred-acre farm with horses, sheep, pygmy goats, peacocksand nearly nine thousand gerbils.From part-time model for her fathers bestselling pet book, How to Raise and Train Pet Gerbils, to full-time employee in the gerbil empires complex of prefab Sears buildings, Holly was an enthusiastic if often exasperated companion on her fathers quest to breed the perfect gerbil. Told with heart, humor, and affection, The Gerbil Farmers Daughter is Hollys ode to a weird and wonderful upbringing and her truly one-of-a-kind father.From the Hardcover edition.