Don’t feed the monkeys, they say.
But what can one do if they just help themselves?
The vervets are getting so crafty these days that they sneak in through the kitchen window burglar guards while the family is distracted by our postage stamp sea view in the front.
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Of course, fruit is the scoff of choice, but they also seem to be quite partial to eggs, as we discovered while mopping up afterwards one festive season evening.
Then, while we were on our hands and knees in the kitchen, they casually moved onto the front balcony and helped themselves to our chip-and-dip.
Luckily they haven’t acquired a taste for single malt whiskey yet.
The problem now is that they have latched onto our home as their regular local diner.
Our guard cats are totally useless. They just lie there and swish their tails while the monkeys gatecrash the party.
Every evening it was the same routine: Trees rustle…”CLOSE THE WINDOWS”… wife runs off to arm herself with the garden hose… “SHOO!”… monkeys blatantly ignore her…
Now we just batten down the hatches, sit back and pretend to enjoy their ‘cute’ antics.
Oh well. At least they aren’t too ferocious and haven’t kidnapped our grandchildren yet.
A little more scary was a solitary intruder at a holiday cottage high up in the Drakensberg on New Year’s Day.
The De Villiers clan was having a very necessary greasy breakfast-after-the-night-before when a scream exacerbated the throb in their heads.
They all looked up as a large male baboon casually sauntered in. “Don’t move,” whispered one of the brave men.
‘Yellow Fang’ eyeballed them all for a few seconds and then walked off to the sideboard and helped himself to a banana.
He then proceeded to the lounge and out the front door, past another dumb-stuck family member who was building a jigsaw puzzle.
Sadly, he was classified ‘a rogue’ and officials had to be called in to hunt him down.
After all, this primate really could ‘kidnap’ the grandchildren… or worse.
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