Baboon Humor

The baboon visits are getting increasingly comical – there’s not other way to deal with their ever-growing need to get to know us and our pantries a little better. There was the lunch hour that I learned their taste for Italian cuisine, and the morning when a curious one joined Roz for her book club, albeit depriving them of their brunch.

Most recently they came to check out our newly constructed dam, where I had set up a camera trap. I wasn’t targeting them, just trying to see whichever animals might enjoy the improved water source, really. After tasting the water, the baboons noticed themselves being watched. And, like the pasta-loving, in-fighting, mafia of a family they are, we soon found our security devices tampered with. Don’t mess with the locals!

Baboon Heaven

It pains me to acknowledge that I have not spent much time at all at BlueGumsFree this year. It would seem that every long-time resident at this extraordinary space is compelled to leave it for long spells, only to return more enchanted – and overwhelmed – by all that BlueGums throws at them.

While we may not have been around very much, our ever-present neighbours have evidently made themselves quite at home – as these photographs attest.

Merlin on the Top Deck

Merlin Sucking Nectar from a Protea Repens Flower

And Just Hanging Out in the Fynbos

Oh and by the way … this is what this section of the mountain looked like a few years back

Thanks to our regular guest and famous sculptor Jurgen Waxweiler for the wonderful baboon photographs that appear in this week’s blog.

Living Side by Side with the Castle Rock Baboons – for 3 Score Years and 10

Over the months we have received written contributions from two Blue Gummers. Brad Zembic and Michael Nell both shared reminiscences of the time they spent at Blue Gums as friends, guests, soul mates to the legendary Jane Eliza Hasted. Today we share a note from Elizabeth Stiekema, now living in Johannesburg, but with an association with Dagbreek, another famous Castle Rock residence, that goes back over 70 years. Elizabeth was prompted by earlier posts on this blog to share a few pertinent observations about the changing interactions between baboons and humans over the years.

“What a tragedy that we can’t share our space at Castle Rock with  wildlife  – baboons, snakes and whatever inhabits the area creating the wider living environment. 

Being a longtime periodic resident- I spent my first holiday at Dagbreek when I was about 22 mths old and am now rising 73- I have witnessed changes over the years not the least of which is the difference in the human/baboon interaction.

As children we watched with great amusement the antics of the babies and the designated babysitter on the hill just above us. The baboons kept their distance only occasionally venturing into No 1 to steal fruit from the bowl on the dining room table. 

The unfortunate familiarity which now prevails seems to me to be a combination of increased urbanization and more pertinently stupid humans who feed the animals. 

The use of paintball guns also appears to be creating a potentially dangerous situation. Carol Morisson told me that she had witnessed a shot baboon turn on the monitor at Millers Point. As she is in residence most of the time and very observant she is a good source of information.

Surely this needs to be brought to the attention of the’experts  if they’d are not perceptive enough to foresee this for themselves?

As I live in Gauteng I feel at a bit of a disadvantage but am prepared to weigh in on the side of the baboons. 

We have also experienced baboon invasions but only when food was available and doors left open! No harm done except for broken glass and spilled food.

On one occasion I was alone in the house and the door was secured by a short rope in the centre. Supposedly baboon proof. Well we reckoned without the ingenuity and determination of one large male to get in. A quick push at the bottom of the door was all he needed to gain access. Pepper spray had no effect on him but plenty on me! 

Finally I threw a basinful of water at him as he sat on the sink eating an avo. 

What happened next was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had

He hopped off the sink walked over to me gently held onto the basin and looked at me as if to say “Get a life” . Then turned around surveyed the shelves selected a promising jar and ambled out.

If only all would heed advice to secure food and doors and windows there would be less stress for both humans and baboons.

If you are planning anything to create a more pleasant environment for all please let me know as I do feel that destruction of one species to ” safeguard ” another is a shortsighted course of action.”

The Baboons and the Experts who are Managing them to Extinction

“We have been living here for 10 years, and the baboons have only taken over the place on three separate days during all that time.”

That was Rosalind’s famous statement in 2009 in response to the perennial question we get about living at BlueGumsFree: “but how do you cope with the baboons?” Once or twice every fortnight the Miller’s Point troop roosts on the cliffs directly above BlueGumsFree about two hundred metres from the house.

 

Baboons near their roosting spot above BlueGumsFree

They have two trails from their roosting spot to the main road to Cape Point. One passes about twenty metres to the South of BlueGumsFree, the other one goes directly through our small plot of land.

Baboons Guiding Baboon-Monitors Along Cape Point Rd just Below Blue Gums

 

They make frequent attempts to raid our house and their arrivals and departures are times of action and excitement – for us, our dogs and the baboons. There are times when it can be annoying, and when they do manage to get past our defences it can be irritating and rather frightening. But for the most part they are a pleasure to have as neighbours. They are intelligent, engaging, and entertaining, with senses of perception that put our comparatively retarded eyesight, sense of smell and hearing to shame. Their agility and dexterity are a marvel to witness and their capacity to scale up sheer rock faces in the blink of an eye are a source of amazement and envy – especially for an ageing bipedal, who takes half-an-hour to cover the same distance that they traverse in minutes.

10 years or 3650 days, and while the baboons had been passing nuisances on a fairly regular basis, they had only caused serious problems on 3 separate occasions.  That translates into 0,0003% of the time that we have been sharing their space. And by serious problems I mean taking over the house, running amok inside, ransacking foodstuffs and leaving a very unpleasant mess, but no injuries, no damage of any significance, no ugly confrontation. Even our dogs and the baboons have fine tuned their territorial battles into a well orchestrated choreography with each group of mammals respecting well defined boundaries. If the baboons come within metres of the house, the dogs see them off with a mixture of posturing and real aggression, but when the baboons cross invisible thresholds the engagement becomes a virtual pantomime of the ancient struggle between canids and primates, with the dogs walking a safe distance behind the troop and the baboons all but ignoring them unless they come too close until they are forced back with a bark, a rolling of the eyes and a dramatic flash of canines.

“Force”, now condemned to die, notices the dogs have gone for a walk and tries to pay a visit,but the door is locked and baboon proof, so a raid becomes a photo opportunity.

This amicable co-existence continues for the most part, but since 2009 things have taken a turn for the worse. This minor but noticeable downturn in relationships between ourselves and the baboons can be traced to their rigorous exclusion from their foraging grounds north of Millers Point, thereby dramatically reducing their range, and to the awarding of contracts (for whatever reasons) to baboon monitoring groups besides Baboon Matters.

Why has this happened?

Well for a start it has happened because the challenge of baboon co-existence with humans on the Peninsula has been reduced to an issue to be addressed by science and bureaucracy in their most negative forms: science as theory based on induction, and bureaucracy as a blind adherence to rules even if they inhibit actions designed to achieve the desired goals.

Why were we able to develop a life of co-existence with the baboons and why has this balance been disrupted in the last 3 years? I think it is because we were able to find a blend of deterrence and tolerance. The baboons and ourselves worked it out in practice. The baboons learnt that we would not tolerate their invasion into our space and that barking dogs, loud noises and assertive behaviour would, for the most part, enforce a respect for boundaries. And at the same time a tolerance on our part for their presence whenever they were not presenting any threat (which was most of the time) meant that they discovered where they could go about their daily lives in peace.

 

This began to change when baboon monitors, operating under the instructions of experts, began to hassle and harass the animals in order to keep them away from the main road, from restaurants and from built up areas. Not only did this force them into smaller spaces, with fewer targets for high calorie food, but it inured them from the deterrents that worked so well in the past.

And as some of the baboons become bolder and unafraid, they sign their own death warrants and sooner or later are shot by the authorities operating under the direction of the experts. And then they blame the activists who have tried to develop strategies and solutions that are contextually specific and seek a more nuanced solution. And so the blame goes on and on. The scientists blame the baboon activists. The activists blame the scientists. It’s not like either one of them has done much good for the baboons whose fate appears to be sealed one way or another. But it is rich indeed when a Professor of Anthropology  from UC San Diego can say:  “The epitaph of these baboons will read: ‘Met an untimely end because activists could not face reality’’.

‘Fred’ at Castle Rock. He has already met an untimely end.

 

When the crags above Blue Gums Free fall silent; when the rising sun is no longer greeted by the barking of the waking baboons; when there are no more youngsters carousing on the cliffs, it won’t be Baboon Matters, but those who chose to respond to this challenge by shooting the likes of Fred  (with Merlin and Force soon to follow) who will earn the curses of Blue Gummers both past and present. And you can be pretty sure that Jane Eliza will curse louder than the rest of us. She lived here on this mountain with the baboons for over thirty years and although she fired her shotgun in anger on the odd occasion it was always to deter and never to kill.

Two Adult Males Above BlueGumsFree

The Land Mammals of BlueGumsFree

The Cape Peninsula has never supported large numbers of mammals, given the low carrying capacity of the fynbos biome. What it lacked in numbers though it made up for in diversity. The larger mammals have disappeared – from the blue buck that was shot to extinction, to the Cape Leopard that still clings tenuously to survival in the Cape Folded Mountains, a little over 50 kilometres away.

When we first moved into the Stone Cottage at BlueGumsFree we were nevertheless surprised at how few mammals we saw, and like so many other natural imbalances in the area, we put it down to the invasive alien trees. While the return of the fynbos has seen an increase in insects, reptiles, rodents and birds there has been no noticeable increase in the number of mammals that use the property as part of their territory.

Of course most mammals that live on the mountain are either crepuscular or nocturnal, so about eighteen months ago I purchased a camera trap. I do not attract mammals by laying down bait, but I position the camera trap on small game trails or overlooking permanent sources of water. We have had some impressive sightings, but they remain rare and unusual.

Leopards may have been eradicated from the Peninsula over 150 years ago, but the caracal still holds out. A sighting of a caracal remains an event that generates enormous excitement. In the 12 years that we have lived here, the residents of BlueGumsFree have had a total of 10 sightings. This has included 5 sightings of the same large male, and a single sighting of a female with two half-grown kittens.

Equally unusual and impressive are sightings of Cape Clawless Otters, although fellow members of the Castle Rock Conservancy, who live about a kilometre north of BlueGumsFree have a resident family in the watercourse that passes by their plots. In the twelve years there have been only three sightings of otters on  the actual Blue Gums land. Water Mongoose are perhaps even less abundant here and I have only seen one – in my first year here. Grey Mongoose are much more common and we pick them up regularly on the camera trap.

Our most regular visitors are the porcupines and they have tangled with our dogs on more than one occasion, once fatally so, when a porcupine quill killed Jezzie our loyal fox-terrier cross.

Another sad demise was the death of a Cape Grysbok that was a regular visit to our watercourse. We found one of our dogs chewing its skull, but are certain that she had simply scavanged the remains of a baboon or caracal kill.

The large and small spotted genets are uncommon, but by no means rare, although I often wonder about the toll that roadkills have on their population. On more than one ocasion we have had them as night-visitors in our kitchen.

We have also had the odd unwelcome day visitor in our kitchen – members of the resident baboon troop. As Rosalind likes to point out, though, in the twelve years that we have been here, the baboons have taken over our home on only six occasions. I hasten to add that three of those occasions have been in the last two years when the baboon monitors in the area became a permanent feature. This is most certainly not coincidental, but more about our resident baboons and the group of humans they lead up and down Cape Point Rd. in my next blog post. For the moment I must end by saying that if it was not for one other species of mammals – our brave and baboon-savvy dogs (German Shepherd, Border Collie, Australian Cattle Dog all converted into South African baboon dogs) – the baboons would long have become a menace instead of being the opportunistic but charismatic neighbours that they are.