Of bleeding hearts, bunny-huggers and good intentions:

Many of us inkommers that left our city lives behind for rural bliss arrived here with starry eyes and unrealistic expectations.

Time tempered us, reality struck, and we love it here even more now that we’re closer to what it really means to supply your own water from dams and rainwater tanks, to cart away your own garbage to the dump, to continue trying to grow your own vegetables when you already know it will actually go to the bokkies/porcupines/goggas/wind/drought/… or, just when you think you’ve cracked it… the baboons who will pull up the entire veggie patch and not eat a thing.

Yeah, it can be very disheartening. The patch is likely to lie fallow for a season, but then inspiration strikes again, the worm farm gets revived, the weeds gets pulled out and a new bed of seedlings gets nurtured.

Such is farm life.

Most of the destruction one can understand, I mean, a bokkie has to eat, no? It’s the baboons that boggles all fairness of mind. They will pull up an onion, not like it, discard it, and then proceed to pull up the whole bed of onions and toss it all away, uneaten. Pure destructive vandalism.

They will also swing on the house gutters and break them. Turn over every paving stone in case there’s something interesting underneath. Pull apart the chicken coop you’re trying to build, looking for who knows what. Nature’s vandalists I say, every one of them.

So, what to do? We’re not going to shoot them, good heavens no (but if they hurt our dogs I may reconsider that). One of the many pieces of advice is to toss loud fireworks like cherry bombs at them. The loud bang makes them think you’re shooting at them - and from experience they know what that means - and they skedaddle.

This is exactly what a farmer in the neighborhood did recently. And it worked! With the big bang there were just grey streaks of baboons leaving for safer territories.

Except, the next morning when he checked on his water reservoir there were 5 dead baboons floating in it. They obviously fell into the reservoir from fright, could not get out again and drowned, poor buggers.

Five babboons with 1 cracker! So much for good intentions.