“I tried to get rid of them, but they were having a party, eating all my bread, bananas and avocados and swigging bottles of wine they had taken out of the refrigerator,” said Carol White, who runs the Camel Rock restaurant in the quiet village of Scarborough near Cape Point, South Africa, at the very tip of the continent.
“They ignore women completely and only cleared off when one of my male staff came,” she added.
Mrs White was not talking about a mob of South African rugby supporters, notorious even in their homeland for their boorish manners, but a group of endangered Chacma baboons. Troops of the animals, led by burly alpha males, have been terrorising the small community on the Atlantic side of the Cape Point nature reserve — one of the most picturesque and usually tranquil areas in South Africa.
Stripped of their natural fear of humans by tourists who give them bananas and other food in defiance of local regulations, the baboons have formed themselves into raiding parties and frequently descend on the village.
Over the past few months, the baboons have burgled houses, sometimes by pushing their babies through security bars and getting them to open a window latch. They have also raided the only store in the town and have intimidated inhabitants, particularly women. A few weeks ago they fought a pitched battle with a group of pet dogs — most of which came off worse — further terrifying residents.
Doris de Swardt, who runs the only shop in Scarborough, a hole-in-the-wall stall called the Mickey Mouse Trap, is having none of it. Since she was raided by a troop, she has kept a hockey stick and a catapult alongside her piles of crisps, chocolates and home-made cakes.
“They stole all my muffins last time and they are completely fearless,” she said. “They are a total menace . . . these people who lobby for them don’t understand they are wild animals and need to be confined to the wild. This has come about because of contact with humans.”
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