Another weekend, another baboon...

Sunday March 4, 2007; Lismore main road.

Keenan, Quinn and I were car bound returning home from Greyton giving Sam an unusually long relaxation period sans our madness; whereupon arriving near the bottom house, we spied two huge male Baboons strutting from under the trees next to the lower dam. On their way towards the few remaining Syrah grapes.

These were not your run-of-the-mill Mutual of Omaha Baboons, but a pair of huge mating alpha-males with testicles the size of grapefruits and canines larger than any African lion. Their silver manes would have given the Tsavo East Lions quite a fright. On all fours they stood as high as my unburdened gut. So, imagine my glee when Keenan yelled, "Daddy Baboons, lets get 'em!" He's four. Not much for the "wrestle with reality whilst sitting in the bumper seat from Grandma Ada" but, he's big on watching daddy in action. Dad, mildly nervous and not wanting to lose any more grapes to our primate neighbours, said, "That's right Keenan, let's get 'em".

I revved the engine, set the palm on the horn and with our windows down rode screaming bloody murder into the thick of both of these males.

The car worked its magic.

I doubt very seriously if they even heard Keenan and I screaming our guts out. One of the males made for the hillsides opposite our dam while the bigger of the two loped up into some African Beefwoods.

The Beefwood stand about three feet apart and number roughly twenty. They're approximately 25 feet tall. We continued chasing the larger Papio higher into one tree. Realising that the car wouldn't go closer that its bumper I stopped. I rolled up Keenan's window, stepped out onto the mud and stood between the car door and the tree...looking up trying make my city eyes keen enough to discern his head for the branches, I felt vaguely like my Yanomamo cousins staring up a tree to find a primate in the Amazon.

Not holding anything mild resembling a poison dart gun or a shotgun, I did the next best thing, I swung both hands furiously together, making a hell of a crack. Mind you it wasn't like a shotgun, but it sure was louder than a .22 or a spit wad.

It worked. The guy freaked.

He started leaping from tree to tree and I kept up the painful staccato of applause. He'd gone across the tops of five or six trees when he missed a branch, and fell. 25 feet would have killed me but quick...he, however, kept falling and grabbing branches, ripping them out, as he tumbled down. He'd obviously fallen from a few trees.

He hit the ground with quite a padded thump and then, in lieu of running off willy-nilly arms akimbo and eyes alight, he just sat there in the high grass staring at me as if to ask, "I fell out of that tree because you were clapping at me."

Like a proverbial Pavlov puppy I kept up the claps...he stared through me to the grapes behind my head and understood that I wasn’t going to quit applauding his critique of Newtonian physics or budge. Unlike the other male he refused to sprint off and ambled past the far side of the dam and up the hill to have the ticks picked off of his back by the harem.

We, the great Baboon frighteners, saved the grapes for yet another day.

Later, I returned to the scene of the fall to get a better picture of the damage he'd sustained. I found his landing area substantially padded. He was quite the acrobat...as he fell, he kept ripping out branches and hurling them beneath himself. He'd made himself a crash pad of the falling branches and needles...then landed right in the centre de cible he'd created. I tell you these Papio Ursinus (Chacma Baboon) are just too smart.

Makes you think we're related.

Wait...I hear them, again...hmmm...maybe its just an ultra-light...then again...

Love

J.