THERE'S a school of thought in East Devon which believes that when Aleksandr Orlov, the smoking jacket-wearing Russian meerkat, opens his book in the TV advert, he is really trying to find which day this week marks the birthday of two distant cousins.

Orphaned meerkats Wren and Rascal will be one year old on Friday, but there was a moment at the very beginning of their lives when they could definitely have done with a rich Russian uncle to play fairy godfather.

On the day they were born, they were cast out of the family nest into the cold by a mother who didn't love them.

Instead of Comparethemarket.com's Aleksandr Orlov coming to the rescue, Wren and Rascal were saved by kindly Jayne Collier who runs the Axe Valley Bird and Animal Park with her husband Andrew.

"They were in middle of the pen where she'd dragged them out – just lying on the floor in the cold," recalled Mrs Collier.

"There's only one breeding pair in a group, no matter how many there are, so we've only got one breeding female. She had reared two sets of kits in the past – in fact, she's successfully raised another set since.

"But for some reason, she didn't want the three I found. So I rescued them, otherwise they'd have been eaten…" One of the three died the next day and the two survivors spent days living in a glove on top of the Colliers' kitchen Aga.

"They were only as big as my finger and they used to sleep in a fingerless glove – they'd wriggle up its fingers to get warm," said Mrs Collier.

No matter how house-trained TV's Aleksandr Orlov seemed to be in his library, meerkats were not exactly domesticated: "They were free-range in the house, but they got so destructive, we had to build them a new pen.

"They just dig – they constantly scratch and dig – they even dug up the grouting between our kitchen flagstones. And they dug the carpet until it all fluffed up.

"They don't sit and sleep like cats – they're on the go all the time. We used to take them out for walks and they used to just follow us. We'd also take them around the farm with the dogs and cats – the labradors were scared of them because they used to bite."

But Wren and Rascal were undaunted by all that life threw at them: "If anyone walked through the door of our house, they would go into defence mode and they'd charge."

Thanks to the unruly behaviour, the pair now have their own pen in the bird and animal park. "They could never go back to the rest of the family or they'd fight to the death. So we'll eventually get two females to go with them."

Meanwhile, the popular natives of the Kalahari Desert are proving an big draw at the bird and animal park. "Everyone wants to see the meerkats," said Mrs Collier.