Comprising a Life
The Bonsai, Travels and Haiku of Vaughn Banting
Cape area
The Cape area of South Africa offers some of the most picturesque coastline scenery I have seen anywhere and is reminiscent of California's Highway 1 down its rocky upper coast. Adding to this experience are wild calla lilies and roaming bands of equally wild baboons.
The Century Plant (Agave americana) is native to the American Southwest but like the pricklypear cactus has colonized large parts of Africa.
A funny story
When we encountered our first group of baboons one the Highway I foolishly opened the door of our car a crack to take a picture. But no sooner had I done that than the big male of the group came right in our car and with one foot on my lap he casually walked over the back of the seat and proceeded to go through our food basket.
Well obviously the club member who had taking me on this adventure and myself both vacated the vehicle in short order leaving behind our cameras and thus any way of recording this unbelievable event. Being locked out of our own car now, all we could do was to peer back in and in despair watch as he invited his wife in to join him. When they had polished off the develed eggs and sandwiches, they turned to my souvenirs which consisted of little colorful pebbles with eyes painted on them attached to a larger pebble. Biting down on these one at a time and discovering they were not very palatable they threw each one out the window and they broke apart on the pavement below.
I patiently tolerated this behavior until the big male reached into my camera bag with all my lenses. I was not going to let him throw my lenses out the window without a fight. So I valiantly reached back in the car and grabbed two full big fists of the hair on his primate back and pulled... at which point he turned around violently and displayed his canines.
I decided right then and there that I had never really been that interested in photography anyway... ejected myself from the car and waited for the worst. To my utter amazement however the baboon carefully took each lens out of the case, examined it and carefully put it back inside its compartment. Soon after which they both left the car and joined the troop who were by now gathered here and there around us including two mothers nursing their babies.
I went and retrieved my camera from the car and began taking photographs of the troop.
Wanting to get a good close-up of a mother nursing her baby I perhaps pushed my luck a little bit too far because all of a sudden the little baby baboon left the protection of its mother's arms and when screaming off in the direction of the big male baboon where upon he and the other baboons started making their way towards my position. This was the first time I really felt a bit scared but we soon reached a stand off and the troop began quieting down again.
This is the baboon that chased us out of our car. I took this picture after I got my camera back. This picture tacked up in my office for a while hence the holes in it.
.... until something caught his attention, where upon he shot right past me and down into the parking lot.
As a woman with a bag of apples(no dought to illegally feed baboons) steped out of her car, this baboon raked it from her arms.
