Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Funny Story

pretty cool picture, huh? that "little" baboon thought it was so smart and so clever. that bench is overlooking a gorgeous view of the ocean. it is at a place called "Simon's Town" on the Peninsula of Cape Town. apparently, baboons reside there.

this is what is so interesting about Cape Town. it is a pretty major city. great downtown. lots of buildings. lots of businesses. very metropolitan. very developed and industrialized. and then there are baboons. funny isn't it?

so my brother in law (actually, my sister in law's husband) and i were stay with my wife's aunt in Cape Town. she lives in an area called Clovelly. she is a tour guide by profession and loves to show people around. so one saturday she took us to see the South African Penguins and the Cape of Good Hope. after we left the penguins, we drove through Simon's Town where we saw all these baboons running around. so we pulled in front of a parked car, and my wife's aunt pulled in front of us. we are sitting there for a moment, when we see a HUGE alpha male baboon run to the car behind us, open the door, and jump in. luckily, there was no one in the car. so big guy baboon grabs what must be a back of food for a picnic and drops it outside the car where girlfriend and baby baboon come over and start eating. big guy baboon wasn't going anywhere. he was enjoying the back seat of the car. so my aunt goes up to the owner of the car and tells him to take off his belt and wave it around because it'll look like a snake and baboons are terrified of snakes. so he went to the back window and took off his belt and shook it around. sure enough - in a second, the baboon flipped out, and took off out of the car.

this is where it gets very interesting. because the only thing we can figure out, is that the baboon "knew" my aunt had told the guy how to scare him out. as soon as the baboon got out of the car it took off straight for my aunt. and it was at that moment, my aunt describes, that the baboon made eye contact with her for a split second. and so the baboon charged at her to attack her. my aunt turned around to run away, and as she did so, the baboon jumped at her. luckily, her moment was moving away from the baboon, so he did not knock her over. but he scratched her across the back. she is lucky she turned around, because if she had been face forward, it would have indicated an aggressive, attack position, and it could have been deadly. baboons have massive fangs for teeth. they are huge.

lucky she got away with only a few scratches. but this all happened in about .5 seconds. from the time the baboon saw the belt to the time he attached my aunt and ran away. it was insane! it happened so fast i wasn't sure it really took place.

Africa provides such wonderful stories!

1 comment:

Claire said...

that's an incredible photo. i'm a bit of a fan. your brother in law (aka your sister in law's husband...) would like to know when all the photo's will be coming our way? we know you want to use some of bryan's to sell to modeling companies, but we'd like to get in on the profit before you take off with our footage.