One from June 2007...
It started as a blissful day. Yet I could sense something was slightly strange as I floated in a waveless sea in early winter. When I saw the first whale of the season spouting and thrashing its flippers, I smsed my neighbour Madelen ecstatically:
“Watching a whale from the beach. Think it’s a humpback!”
She replied: “Watching a baboon from the stoep. Think it’s a hooligan.”
I should have known then.
When I came home, hours later, some bright green packaging outside my door caught my eye in the fading sunlight. Has some one left me a present? I wondered. Yes, they had. Closer inspection revealed my gift was a ripped packet of sesame seeds. My Atwell’s hulled sesame seeds. From my fridge. But my front door was closed and locked! At that moment the horror struck me.
THE BABOONS!
I opened the door and tumbled into chaos. My kitchen looked like a ransacked health shop. The fridge loomed open and greenery was strewn across the floor. Cauliflower leaves, avocado skins and pips, lettuce, onion peels. An imaginative installation had been constructed from cardboard boxes decorated with basmati rice and dried chick peas, topped with my inverted kettle. Rice had erupted over the table where it soaked up water from an overturned cup of herbs. The floor was smeared with egg and buckwheat flour, like a clumsy toddler had mixed a cake on the carpet. I followed a trail of baby marrow ends to my bedroom window, which was wide open, its sill adorned with the culprit’s calling card: a huge black turd, steaming in the late afternoon heat.
“The bastards! They got into my house!” I screamed to Madelen who in a blink stood gaping in the doorway. She chivalrously asked: “Can I do anything to help?”, but somehow I felt I had to face this alone, like a woman. I retorted sharply: “No. I just needed a witness.”
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The cleanup operation absorbed me for the next two and a half hours. Finally, my extensive experience in cleaning up after wild student parties came in handy. Not that different. Except that drunken students have a higher frequency of finding the toilet. A bizarre fascination crept in, making me feel like a nature detective piecing together the evidence at a particularly brutal crime scene. I learned a lot about baboon nutrition. They eat eggs whole and spit out a few masticated shells. They munch onions like apples. They bite chillies in half and leave it at that. And they love oats. Whole oats, quick oats and oat bran. Not a trace was left. So maybe they are not that different to me? Except that they left the leeks and celery.
They could be classified as a healthy bunch of ovo-vegetarians, who seem to prefer the organic vegetables. Those were the only ones they devoured completely (like me they relish kohlrabi.) Discovering the similarities I shared with my furry brothers and sisters did not console me as I wiped baboon crap off the stove. When I removed the splodge of mashed avo beside it, my anger erupted in full force. The meal I’d come home to savour: tacos with guacamole and aduki beans, was totally obliterated. The ripped taco box lay on the carpet and the cardboard inner that stops the precious crispy corn half moons from being crushed was under my bed with not a crumb to spare. My real favourites were their favourites. That made me squirm.
I ran outside and found the culprits lurking just beyond my window, a youngster taking a bite out of a butternut that was clenched in his lumbering paws. I picked up a plastic chair and wielded it like a maniac, raging at them and roaring so they scuttled off into the forest. A wounded bag of soya lecithin lay abandoned on the grass.
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As I cleaned, I seethed. How could they? Did they really have to throw rice all over my bed? Did they have to get their teeth into the plastic bag of readymade soup and drag it into the bush? Did they have to pull my bathroom cabinet off the hinges and snap the leg of my laundry bag stand? Were they going through my papers? The box file lid was off...
I tried to think yogic thoughts as I wiped of the bottles of sesame oil and aloe vera juice that lay on the floor. I thought: “maybe this is my lesson. I must release my attachment to food; it takes up too much of my time and attention. I needed to clean out my fridge anyway. Maybe this will help me move forward in my life...” and other delusions that were quickly exchanged for warlike visions when I found my organic soy sauce in a shit-smeared glass bottle. I pictured myself running into the forest toting a rifle and suddenly understood why farmers want to kill pests. It’s the rage. Didn’t these animals know their place?
After all the wiping, scrubbing, mopping and vacuuming, after changing sheets and bedding and washing soiled mats , I sat on the floor to make a call. Feeling calmer I acknowledged that we humans were in their territory. That the golf estate being built next to the national park was obstructing their natural migration path. They were just behaving like any intelligent, hungry animals. And that’s when I saw it: the piece de resistance: two nicely rounded turds deposited under the table...just out of sight of the average human eye. The damn creature had to crawl under a chair to make the extra effort for that perfectly-placed poo. I was finished. No more rationalising. It was disgusting!
Maybe I haven’t reached enlightenment yet, or oneness with our fellow creatures. Maybe I am too attached to my clean house and animal-free existence. I admit it! I have a long path to walk. But one thing is loud and clear. I am so glad that t human beings have invented glass jars with metal snap-down lids. It’s the one thing those furry rascals can’t yet get the hang of opening. At last, some evidence we have evolved beyond our fellow apes.
It started as a blissful day. Yet I could sense something was slightly strange as I floated in a waveless sea in early winter. When I saw the first whale of the season spouting and thrashing its flippers, I smsed my neighbour Madelen ecstatically:
“Watching a whale from the beach. Think it’s a humpback!”
She replied: “Watching a baboon from the stoep. Think it’s a hooligan.”
I should have known then.
When I came home, hours later, some bright green packaging outside my door caught my eye in the fading sunlight. Has some one left me a present? I wondered. Yes, they had. Closer inspection revealed my gift was a ripped packet of sesame seeds. My Atwell’s hulled sesame seeds. From my fridge. But my front door was closed and locked! At that moment the horror struck me.
THE BABOONS!
I opened the door and tumbled into chaos. My kitchen looked like a ransacked health shop. The fridge loomed open and greenery was strewn across the floor. Cauliflower leaves, avocado skins and pips, lettuce, onion peels. An imaginative installation had been constructed from cardboard boxes decorated with basmati rice and dried chick peas, topped with my inverted kettle. Rice had erupted over the table where it soaked up water from an overturned cup of herbs. The floor was smeared with egg and buckwheat flour, like a clumsy toddler had mixed a cake on the carpet. I followed a trail of baby marrow ends to my bedroom window, which was wide open, its sill adorned with the culprit’s calling card: a huge black turd, steaming in the late afternoon heat.
“The bastards! They got into my house!” I screamed to Madelen who in a blink stood gaping in the doorway. She chivalrously asked: “Can I do anything to help?”, but somehow I felt I had to face this alone, like a woman. I retorted sharply: “No. I just needed a witness.”
When I contemplate that phrase now its ridiculousness hits me like a bad hairdo. What? A witness to stand and testify in the SANParks Wildlife Court, while the dominant male baboon is cross-questioned for trespassing and theft? So I can present the mischievous troop with a bill for the damages?
.jpg)
The cleanup operation absorbed me for the next two and a half hours. Finally, my extensive experience in cleaning up after wild student parties came in handy. Not that different. Except that drunken students have a higher frequency of finding the toilet. A bizarre fascination crept in, making me feel like a nature detective piecing together the evidence at a particularly brutal crime scene. I learned a lot about baboon nutrition. They eat eggs whole and spit out a few masticated shells. They munch onions like apples. They bite chillies in half and leave it at that. And they love oats. Whole oats, quick oats and oat bran. Not a trace was left. So maybe they are not that different to me? Except that they left the leeks and celery.
They could be classified as a healthy bunch of ovo-vegetarians, who seem to prefer the organic vegetables. Those were the only ones they devoured completely (like me they relish kohlrabi.) Discovering the similarities I shared with my furry brothers and sisters did not console me as I wiped baboon crap off the stove. When I removed the splodge of mashed avo beside it, my anger erupted in full force. The meal I’d come home to savour: tacos with guacamole and aduki beans, was totally obliterated. The ripped taco box lay on the carpet and the cardboard inner that stops the precious crispy corn half moons from being crushed was under my bed with not a crumb to spare. My real favourites were their favourites. That made me squirm.
I ran outside and found the culprits lurking just beyond my window, a youngster taking a bite out of a butternut that was clenched in his lumbering paws. I picked up a plastic chair and wielded it like a maniac, raging at them and roaring so they scuttled off into the forest. A wounded bag of soya lecithin lay abandoned on the grass.
.jpg)
As I cleaned, I seethed. How could they? Did they really have to throw rice all over my bed? Did they have to get their teeth into the plastic bag of readymade soup and drag it into the bush? Did they have to pull my bathroom cabinet off the hinges and snap the leg of my laundry bag stand? Were they going through my papers? The box file lid was off...
I tried to think yogic thoughts as I wiped of the bottles of sesame oil and aloe vera juice that lay on the floor. I thought: “maybe this is my lesson. I must release my attachment to food; it takes up too much of my time and attention. I needed to clean out my fridge anyway. Maybe this will help me move forward in my life...” and other delusions that were quickly exchanged for warlike visions when I found my organic soy sauce in a shit-smeared glass bottle. I pictured myself running into the forest toting a rifle and suddenly understood why farmers want to kill pests. It’s the rage. Didn’t these animals know their place?
After all the wiping, scrubbing, mopping and vacuuming, after changing sheets and bedding and washing soiled mats , I sat on the floor to make a call. Feeling calmer I acknowledged that we humans were in their territory. That the golf estate being built next to the national park was obstructing their natural migration path. They were just behaving like any intelligent, hungry animals. And that’s when I saw it: the piece de resistance: two nicely rounded turds deposited under the table...just out of sight of the average human eye. The damn creature had to crawl under a chair to make the extra effort for that perfectly-placed poo. I was finished. No more rationalising. It was disgusting!
Maybe I haven’t reached enlightenment yet, or oneness with our fellow creatures. Maybe I am too attached to my clean house and animal-free existence. I admit it! I have a long path to walk. But one thing is loud and clear. I am so glad that t human beings have invented glass jars with metal snap-down lids. It’s the one thing those furry rascals can’t yet get the hang of opening. At last, some evidence we have evolved beyond our fellow apes.
Comments
It has to be said again - Paintball gun!
//Mad