He had mischief written all over his shocked face as I discovered him in our kitchen eating my mango props for the upcoming hot sauce video we were about to shoot. I was sitting on the other side of the wall painting when I heard slurping and chomping sounds coming from the kitchen. He left one and a half mangos behind for us to make our video with.
Our local troop of vervet monkeys live in the large turpentine trees next to our property.
We lived here for a few months before the monkeys started stealing our food out of our kitchen. I think they finally figured out that we are nice people and that we would not hurt them. Since they realised this, they have taken every opportunity to sneak into our kitchen and steal fruit from the fruit bowl. They eat everything we try to grow in the garden except the chillies. They tried those once and haven’t been back for more.
We decided that our best bet is to learn to live with them, so we made a little platform for them at the bottom of our garden where they can play and eat whatever we put down there. Far away from the house, so that they don’t associate food with us. They are really cute, but also really dangerous, especially to our dogs. It’s very challenging as an animal lover to see a hungry creature and not feed it. I think we have found a good solution. We will see how it plays out.