Tuesday, March 23 2010
Bad Monkeys
My, what big teeth you ha . . . aaargh!
For Matt Ruff fans, I'm not referring to his excellent novel of that name. Nope, I'm talking about a ravening horde of Grape Apes. According to AP, Baboons Gobble Grapes in South Africa:
Largely undeterred by electric fences, hundreds of wild baboons in South Africa's prized wine country are finding the vineyards of ripe, succulent grapes to be an "absolute bonanza," said Justin O'Riain of the University of Cape Town.
"The poor baboons are driven to distraction," said O'Riain, who works in the university's Baboon Research Unit.
"As far as baboons are concerned, the combination of starch and sugar is very attractive — and that's your basic grape," he said.
Growers say the picky primates are partial to sweet Pinot Noir grapes, adding to the winemakers' woe: Pinot Noir sells for more than the average Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon.
"They choose the nicest bunches, and you will see the ones they leave on the ground. If you taste them, they are sour," said Francois van Vuuren, farm manager at La Terra de Luc vineyards, 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Cape Town. "They eat the sweetest ones and leave the rest."
I'm glad to hear that they've got good taste, at least. But are the baboons the real villains here? Looks like a classic case of civilisation encroaching on habitat.
Baboons have raided South Africa's vineyards in the past, but farmers say this year is worse than previous ones because the primates have lost their usual foraging areas due to wildfires and ongoing expansion of grape-growing areas.
In the Constantia wine-producing area alone, up to $34,800 worth of the crop has been lost annually in previous years, according to the Baboon Research Unit.
One farm, La Petite Ferme, was hit particularly hard after fires in the Franschhoek wine-producing region devastated large swaths of land, burning up the baboons' normal foraging areas. The primates then descended on its chardonnay crop, eating or destroying up to three tons of grapes.
Hungry animals forced to forage closer to ever-expanding humans, and they're practically baiting them with unnaturally sweet food, something they're pretty much genetically powerless to resist.
O'Riain doesn't think the problem will go away because vineyards are expanding into the lower slopes of the mountains, the baboons' traditional foraging grounds.
"Where there's a mountain, there's a baboon," O'Riain said. "As we take up more and more of their land, the conflict increases."
I hope they keep scaring them away and don't start shooting or trapping. One of the vineyards that I've visited over the years kept a massive but very slow Pit Bull Terrier on staff to run off the deer. They told him if he could catch one, he could keep it, but the poor canine didn't stand a chance--but the deer didn't hang around either.
I've always thought that when you take over wild lands for farming you'd better leave a tithe for the critters you displace. In one of Michael Pollan's books he talks about a farmer who maintains hillsides and woods near his farm, because if he didn't, the coyotes and raccoons wouldn't have a place to live, and they'd raid his animals and crops. Now that's a canny farmer.
Of course, it's not all grim when man and monkey intersect. A little gem inside the AP article:
Sometimes the baboons even get an alcohol kick — by feasting on discarded grape skins that have fermented in the sun. After gobbling up the skins, the animals stumble around before sleeping it off in a shady spot.
Banana Gin is a killer
Ha, good for them. I wouldn't want to face a baboon with a hangover though . . .
| Posted by Grape Ape Tim AT 1:29PM | 0 Comments |  |
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