Mama’s got a gun

I am sitting behind my computer, typing away quietly, and he sneaks up on me. Sensing a dark shadow behind me, I turn around and gasp. He looks at me, his eyes piecing, a slight grin playing around his fierce pointy canines. I scream. I wave my arms. He shrugs, and retreats, casually. 

A few days later I walk into the living room from the bedroom hallway. He is sauntering halfway the living room, same spot, and looks annoyed that I interrupted his stroll to the kitchen. Caught in the act, he feels cornered, and looks around him. Which way to go, into the kitchen? Back the way he came, the patio doors? I’m blocking the back window as well as the hall to the bedrooms. He starts towards the kitchen, his favourite destination, where he knows we keep the food.

I shout, wave my hands, try to block him without aggravating. He would have no way out, all doors and windows in the kitchen are closed, because of him. All food is locked away. But worse, Indah might be in the kitchen, and when he feels the back-exit is blocked by me, he might get aggressive. I flap and sway my arms, shout, still trying to avoid looking into his eyes. Don’t go there! He gets the message and picks a quick exit via the patio instead. I breathe out again.

We have lived with macaques peacefully for years. We have enjoyed sitting on the patio, sipping or tea and Ribena, watching them weaving through the trees, some with babies clutching to their bellies. We watched them file by in a row, jumping a large palm leaf one at the time, waiting for it to slowly sway over, jumping off to the next tree, and the leaf swaying back to it’s original position, ready to pick up the next one in the monkey family train. 

We have learned to hide all food, even the toothpaste, and to lock the medicine cabinet securely. We chose to live in the jungle and we knew they lived there too. 

But this guy is different. I don’t trust him. And he, obviously, does not trust me. 

He is starting to treat not only the garden, but also the house as his home. And that is where I draw my line. 

Possibly this male, a large Alfa, I competing with us for space. Our house is comfortable and safe, and, as he knows well, full of nice food to steal and toothpaste to suck. We need to teach him who’s the boss. Another possible scenario is that, since this group contains two large males, our guy is in fact not Alfa, but Beta male, and he is being pushed out of the group. The recent monkey wars, where they fight high up in the trees, loud screeches resonating through the street, support this theory. Beta male will be aggressive, frustrated by being pushed out of his family group, and insecure as he will need to go out to start his own, in a world where territory is scarce. 

All perfectly natural behaviour for a monkey, but not a war I want battled out in my living room. 

Advice from a macaque specialist at Acres advices: macaque activated sprinklers (which I am sure the kids will love, just a bit too much), spraying chili or other foul substances on window sills (which, since they quite happily rip chili’s of our plants, I doubt the effectiveness of) or spraying/ splashing them with water. Show him who’s boss.

So. I went out and bought me the biggest super soaker I could find. And a small handgun for by my desk. Beware, you motherfucking monkeys. Mama’s got a gun. The battle is on!

Further encounters

After our first brush with the primate neighbours, the monkeys and us have lived together peacefully. The macaques roam around the forest, and only visit occasionally. On those days I have learned to keep windows closed and bananas out of sight, so they will play in the garden quietly and snack on palm seeds instead.

There is plenty other wildlife to encounter too. In the morning the cock-a-doodle-do of wild roosters wakes us. Roel has spotted one of the flying lemurs this area is famous for, squirrel-like creatures that come out in the twilight, gliding between the trees. Little brown, non-flying, but extremely agile squirrels abundantly whirl through the trees around us, as do colourful birds and butterflies. We are less impressed with stories about a wild boar molesting one of the neighbourhood’s dogs, and the next-door neighbour who had a nest of baby black spitting cobras. We have been in awe of a monitor lizard that stretched over a meter, leisurely strolling over the road, and remain unperturbed by his smaller cousins, the chi-chaks and geckos, that roam freely through the house. They are friendly little creatures, feeding on insects and mosquitos, the only annoying thing about them being the little droppings they leave.

No, the real hazards of living on the border of the jungle have been botanical rather than animal, at least so far. The decorative grasses in the garden cut my hands with their razor-sharp thorny leaves till I bleed. And after two weeks of drought and haze, it took only the smallest of tropical storms for the old mango tree behind the house to drop a large branch, on top of our roof. Neighbours told us roof damage by falling trees was a common problem. A large part of that same mango tree had fallen on the roof before, and the former tenants experienced a mayor leakage in the bathroom. The landlord, the Singaporean government, was so slow repairing the damage, they finally left. By the time we moved in, the house had gotten a brand-new roof. So when we complained that we wanted the tree gone we were curious what would happen.

Surely, the next day a smiling Indian bloke arrived with a small chainsaw. Unfortunately, it was the same twenty-odd year old boy who had done the ‘professional’ cleaning of our house, dirtying kitchen cabinets I cleaned before him with his muddy rag. The same boy who clumsily mutilated the palm trees in the front garden, which bought me disapproving looks from the professional gardener I later hired. When I saw him, the only thing my brain could do was shout: No. Drop the tool. No. I am not letting you anywhere near my mango tree. No. I could only picture the whole thing smack down, bang in the middle of our shiny new roof. He smiled again, offended, assuring me it would be no big deal, he had cut bigger trees. But I stood my ground. And so does the tree.

Meet the neighbours

Our first, brief, encounter was whilst I was viewing the new house, when it wasn’t ours yet. I noticed one of the branches in the highest tree swaying gently. Squinting my eyes, I saw a dark shadow clambering up a thin branch, then quietly jumping out of sight.

We moved in, got unpacked, settled. A few days after, on a late afternoon, I heard the gate bell ring. It was an old-fashioned, copper affair. It did not toll firmly, but hesitantly, irregularly. I walked out to see who was there, and met a motley crowd at the gate. A few crouched on the floor, some spilled over the pillars. Two babies were swinging back and forth gently on the creaking gate door. I laughed, and called out the kids: ‘Come meet our new neighbours!’
Jasmijn pointed excitedly, ‘aap, aap,’ but Tijm and Linde could barely be pried away from the telly. They had plenty of those at their school.

The next morning we enjoyed breakfast together. We ate our toast on the patio; they munched on the seeds of the palm tree. Occasionally some husks or leaves dropped in the grass, or we heard the swishing of the leaves as they swung over to another tree. We admired their agility, their jumping skills. We even commented that their table manners did not seem too bad.

After we put the kids on the school bus I noticed a large hump hanging in the baby papaya tree. The one I had carefully cultivated on our old balcony, the one I was so happy it had survived the move. We ran over, shooing and shouting, and the brown creature ran off, taking with him the entire crown of the tree. He rushed into the high palm tree and chomped away happily. Annoyed, I examined the bare stump. ‘You monkey,’ I cried, shaking my fist at the fluttering palm fronds.

I went to brush my teeth. Then I heard screaming from the kitchen, and rushed over, toothbrush in mouth. On the worktop he sat, in the middle of a pile of banana peel. Roel rushed in too, screaming, and the creature scrammed out the window. He sat his bum on the concrete outside and bared his pointy teeth, angry to have his breakfast disturbed. We quickly closed the window and hid the remaining bananas in the bread tin.

Our new neighbours have bad manners. They poo on the lawn and our laundry. They steal our food. They wreck our garden. Yet I cannot help myself. I sit back and watch them play, jumping from branch to branch, as if they can fly. I watch the babies clinging to their mothers bellies, hugging them close, then running off, playfully chasing each other round the gate. Yes, they are a menace. But they are also darned cute.