MR Ken Price’s letter on 18 October regarding the monkey problem was refreshing.
He raised the question, ‘who would pay for the Great Monkey Culling exercise, and what would it cost?’
If we consider that a snake catcher expects R300 for disposing of a little snake, then R500 for a big monkey sounds reasonable.
And I suppose the guy at the monkey crematorium would expect something also, add another R500?
And how many of the defenseless creatures do we need to murder to make a noteworthy difference to their numbers?
May as well exterminate the lot – all 90 million of them.
Culling is not a workable solution, but we certainly need to revise the outdated laws that protect monkeys.
Perhaps we should make it a criminal offence for people to feed monkeys.
Even unintentionally, there is nothing more important to a monkey than food.
If every homeowner in the Highway area denied the monkeys food for a month, there would not be a single monkey left here.
They would all depart to wherever they can find food, the Durban city centre might appeal to them.
There they will not encounter dogs or crowned eagles and there is plenty of trash in the streets for them to eat.
In theory, my solution would work great, but in practice it would be a flop simple because there is a small percentage of home owners among us who find it is too much trouble to place a concrete block on the trash bin lid.
Eddie Naicker
Westville
