After a fantastic experience of being within inches of African Buffalo, we decided to retreat the terrace bar for a cool drink, the bar looked out over the water hole where the Buffalo were still happily grazing away. Little did we know there was a highly skilled thief about, as we relaxed with our drinks and looking over the images we took of the Buffalo, we could hear a “Clink, Clink” sound, my wife said that sounds like a tea cup and spoon.
As we looked out over in the direction the sound was coming from towards our room, that was on the fourth floor, on the far side of the four story high wooden mountain lodge building. We could see a Vervet monkey sitting on the edge of the rooms balcony, it took a while, but when it registered that, that was our balcony and it was my tea cup the Monkey was holding and drinking from, we soon chased back to the room.
On entering our room we were relieved to find that we did shut and lock the door before we left to photograph the Buffalo. But in our haste to be the first in the viewing bunker we had left our tea and books on the balcony! My wife desperate to not loose the items left outside opened the door and the monkey made a dash for it, as my wife turned around the monkey reappeared with its head around the corner post make a screeching call and reached out for the tea cup. Not expecting the monkey to reappear we both ended up on our backsides on the floor.
Lesson one learned; never leave any door, window, bag or anything you don’t want to loose, exposed for a Vervet monkey to have away. unfortunately the monkey did get the better of us and the cup came to a shattering end.