Monkey mischief at Lily's Cottage

Here at Lily’s Cottage in our tranquil green valley, we have a troop of vervet monkeys passing through our garden most mornings and evenings, foraging for food. They are an endless source of amusement, but often alarming as well!

The three wise monkeys in the wild plum tree - See no evil, Hear no evil and Speak no evil :)

We usually hear them running on our roof and then we all scatter closing doors, as these little monkeys are hungry and very opportunistic and will come inside and help themselves to fruit or whatever food they can find. They know exactly where our fruit basket is!

Mom was baking cookies one day in Lily’s Cottage, and when she came back into the kitchen, one mischievous monkey was having a cookie feast on the breakfast nook where the cookies were cooling down 😊 Of course Mom had to discreetly throw the entire batch of cookies out, much to the delight of the rest of the troop once they spotted it. On one occasion, we had just picked a couple of papayas for ourselves, and one wily monkey spotted it and ran off with one large papaya!

We discard all our fruit and vegetable peels along the path they take daily, but not when they are around, as they may be cute, but they are wild animals and will start approaching humans for food. We have a warning sign for our guests here at Lily’s Cottage in that regard.

It is such a delight watching the new babies cling to mommy’s tummy, sometimes even the young teens ‘babysit’. So funny also seeing them grow up and try to scale the papaya trees but not getting very far!

Recently, we were very saddened to hear that someone in a neighbouring suburb had poisoned a troop of vervet monkeys! We had not seen our monkeys for about a month & thought they were the victims. Then much to our delight, they reappeared.

Drinking water from the bird bath

We as humans can co-exist with them, human beings are taking over their natural habitat, they are innocent victims!!!!
Here at Lily's Cottage we take precautions to stop them foraging for food inside by installing inexpensive netting on our security gates wherever we can. We've also planted papaya trees & a wild plum tree on which the birds & monkeys as well as us humans can feast on.

Loerie (Tauraco) showing off its' brilliant red wings as it flies off after feasting on the papayas.
www.lilyscottage.co.za