I SEE the great monkey debate continues unabated.
The letters keep getting longer and longer, but no contestants have yet provided a sensible solution.
The pro-monkey supporters have suggested that people pestered by monkeys should drag a 30-metre hosepipe around the garden and squirt the little thieves and watch them flee in terror?
I prefer to rely on my electric fence. It’s less tiring and more fun to watch.
The anti-monkey activists have pinned their hopes on a vain belief that some person in a position in authority will approve a law permitting the culling of vervet monkeys. (As if that will ever happen!)
While the pro-monkey supporters stubbornly refuse to admit there are far too many monkeys. (In fact, they want more).
My property is a small portion of what was once Dilkoosh farm, established in 1930.
It is only in the past 22 years that it has become necessary here to wrap every banana bunch with chicken-wire mesh to defend the fruit against marauding monkeys.
Other crops have to be grown in a wire cage for the same reason.
Prior to about 1995 no monkeys were seen here.
I should know – I’ve been here for 68 years.
The monkeys have benefited greatly from urban expansion.
Instead of scratching in the mud of the coastal mangrove swamps searching for food, they now need to simply lift the lid of the nearest bin or climb a litchi tree that some homeowner planted in their back lawn, which 20 years ago was barren grassland.
Then we have those people who deliberately feed monkeys, with no consideration for their neighbours.
Some people have suggested that the resurgence of crowned eagles in the Highway area is nature’s way of putting things right, but there are far too few of those wonderful creatures to ever put a dent in the monkey numbers.
The domestic dog remains the sole noteworthy predator of the monkey, but we now all have tall burglar-proof fences surrounding our properties, which function in favour of the monkey – not the dog.
I dislike the vervet monkey hoards as much as anymore, but I will never vote in favour of culling.
Partly because I have taken steps to ensure the monkeys do not affect me in any way and mostly because a culling exercise would be hugely expensive.
Who would pay for it? Why, the ratepayers, of course!
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