In the street battle for supremacy between man and baboon, it can only be said that both sides are using guerrilla tactics.
For
the baboons it means swarming SAS style up the sheer sides of blocks of
flats, prising open windows and plundering anything that is inside.
Usually they just want food, but sometimes a flapping set of net
curtains or a child’s cuddly toy bear can provide some added
entertainment.
For the humans, the weapons of choice – given that
their enemy is a protected species – tend to be paintball guns and
pepper sprays. They have the momentary effect of driving the baboons
away, but hunger and
sheer nerve always bring them back. To
survive, they trawl through waste bins, loiter at rubbish dumps, steal
from shops and markets and prowl around the picnic sites. Some are such
practised scavengers that they know exactly when the rubbish carts will
be arriving with fresh supplies at the dump.
While
some people don’t give a monkey’s about their vagrant neighbours even
leaving out food for them, others go ape just at the thought of them.
In
the suburb of Scarborough, a woman screams at the pair of baboons
sitting casually on the roof of her house munching hunks of pilfered
brown bread.
‘No-one understands what is happening here! This is
the complete nightmare’, she yells, explaining that a baboon recently
snatched shopping from her daughter’s hands. ‘She is completely
traumatised,’ she adds. ‘It is not even safe to leave the house. And
no-one does anything about it.’
A neighbour hurls a futile stick at them – but they carry on munching. ‘I hate them,’ he says.
Not
far away in Main Street, employees at a safari company have just
discovered what happens if you go away for the week-end and leave a
window open.
A group of baboons led by a male called Moby has
left a trail of destruction in the staff kitchen. First target was the
fridge where every packet has been opened, investigated and eaten. The
menu runs to bread, pasta, cheese, peppers, eggs, carrots, tuna and
corn.
‘We
are sitting on a time bomb. Something has got to happen,’ he says. ‘In
the Spring they eat the young shoots, in summer the grapes. If the
nature conservation authority would allow it, we would shoot them all.
Every one of them.’
But many people admire the ingenuity of the
baboons and are prepared to rub along with customers who never pay for
anything. At a small supermarket between the settlements of Welcome Glen
and Da Gama Park, a baboon called Quandi calls in once or twice a week.
‘He goes directly to the fruit stand and takes a few kilos of bananas,’
says the manageress. ‘Then he runs past the check out to the shelves
with the crisps. He seems to prefer cheese and onion.’
