Monkeying Around

We call our organic vegetable garden a monkey-proof cage for reasons that are glaringly obvious:  

Hear No Evil, See No Evil and Speak No Evil 

Monkey-business

Vervet monkeys form large troupes, of about 30 or so and are gregarious, social and sophisticated creatures. Woe betide you if you leave your kitchen door open even a crack; habituated to humans and increasingly deprived of their natural habitat, they have become urbanised, if not urbane, in their habits, and adept at adapting their foraging habits such that your house is seen as the local grocery store, though they are most remiss in terms of paying the tab.   

Babies are normally born in spring (September/October) so daily we are confronted with a wide-eyed and particularly curious lot of half-grown adults in the troupe which makes life a lot livelier - and we have to be more than usually careful to ensure no entry to our house can ever be left open lest the young ones pour in, followed swiftly by the rest of the troupe. Although the alpha male will tolerate other males, this is provided they are subservient, and at times you'll find a wild, loose bunch of young males cavorting in your garden, ostracised for the moment (and though they may defiantly display nary a care in that regard, chances are, come sunset, you'll find them sufficiently humbled and back within the comfort and safety of the troupe again). Sometimes you will see a lone male in your garden, who always looks most awfully lonely, pulling up roots and leaves in a desultory manner - he's usually the beta male, sent ahead to forage for food, but he never exhibits complacency with his  subsidiary though crucial role.  

We are privileged to have a nature reserve so close to us, and are even more fortunate to reside within the 0.56% of the country which consists of a naturally forested area. As a result, monkey-business is something you are simply going to have to adapt to, and hence, for us to continue to enjoy our urban wildlife, we resorted to fencing in our little piece of garden paradise. 

The young in particular are very social and gregarious creatures, and if you are lucky, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of them in the grasslands of the nearby nature reserve:

They are adept at negotiation and form complex but stable groups; however, in jockeying for hierarchy, fisticuffs and other forms of violence have been noted to break out on occasion.