Territory - Part 1: Monkeys

 

A human being is a territorial animal. You can also see this instinct in how we try to protect our personal space. Just think of all the remedies gardeners in Europe used last year against snails.

In the south, it's different pests again. In Vietnam, it was a matter of keeping rats out of the house. And cockroaches! Those really big ones with long antennae. You'd rather not hear them rustling in the dark. Accidentally step on them with your foot. Brrr. No, thanks. There are spiders and ants. In Rwanda, a cupboard was eaten by termites. Once a scorpion wandered in. Over the years, I learnt some techniques to kindly show these little uninvited guests the door or tolerate them, like the geckos whose droppings you find all over the place.

Here in Durban, in the fairly tropical province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, you also have cockroaches and ants and things like that. But new to me are the monkeys that just move around in this urban environment. They are vervet monkeys. They are not very big, somewhere between 40 and 60 cm, weighing 5 to 8kg. They have grey-green fur. The males have a conspicuous blue scrotum. They live in large groups. They are very agile and above all, fully adapted to the environment they live in. On weekends, they descend in large numbers to nearby parks. All the people having picnics there will surely leave some goodies behind. Bins are emptied, bags licked. From the kitchen window, I watch mothers climbing up a building with a little one on their stomach using the drainpipe. A whole troop sometimes sits on the lawn in the garden. They groom each other's fur, play with the little ones. Or they argue in the tall trees. It is interesting to observe them.

They are also super-fast. When I was still in an airBnB, before moving into my current flat, someone left the window open. In the evening, I found my fruit basket ransacked. The fact that there were a couple of big dogs barking at them in the garden didn't stop them.

“Wait,” I said to a colleague a few weeks ago during an online conversation, “I'll turn my camera”. I was working at home and had seen a monkey come out onto the balcony. And then another, and another. “How cute is that,” said my colleague. At that moment, nine of those cute little monkeys were ruining my attempts at gardening. The radishes were pulled out, the still unripe tomatoes picked and nibbled. The petunias turned out to be a real treat. I already knew they love chives. Again, it was cut down. I found my watering can overturned so they could lick the water off the patio boards.

Do slug pellets help against monkeys?