Don't Sit Under the Monkey Tree

Thursday, September 1, 2005



After leaving Musoma we did not stop until we'd reached the very edge of the Serengeti.

As our entrance fee only allowed us exactly twenty-four hours within the Serengeti Reserve, we stopped for a picnic lunch in a shady grove of acacia trees outside the Ndabaka Gate.

There was a cheerful wooden sign tacked to a tree: "WARNING! ANIMALS MAY ATTACT HUMAN BEING!"

As we were just outside the gates to the Serengeti National Park where lions and hyenas roam freely, I don't suppose the sign was misplaced, but I wasn't expecting the attack to come from such a cute little creature as a vervet monkey.

And I wasn't expecting the attack to come from above!

Yes, be careful when you are sitting underneath trees and monkeys are about. They laugh like crazy when they find somebody to pee on.

Pol, sorry about the shirt I borrowed. I washed it three times but the back of it was just never the same again.

By the way, the monkey momma and her baby pictured are totally innocent. It was one of her evil friends in the next tree who did it as I sat peacefully eating my lunch.