It may not be always that you see a monkey in your house, or shall I say this may never happen that you see a monkey in your house! But that does not hold true at my place at Banerghatta Road, it feels like am actually living in BNP (Banerghatta National Park)! I see monkey(s) everyday on my balcony (many times inside my house! – a few ‘encounter with monkey’ stories can be read a few paragraphs below) and if the door is open they will come inside, scan what’s there in Kitchen, take whatever is edible or if the day’s food is not upto the mark they may opt to leave it. Well, what the heck, they have 700 homes here (within this apartment complex) to scan for more food !!!
Well, does this look like your daily routine at your home? I bet not! Not too sure if I should be happy or sad with so much wildlife around me! Its not only monkey that we see. Saw a really big snake outside our boundary – must be a 6 foot long cobra! Everyday evening we see a OWL in one of the building’s first floor balcony, seems to be his favorite place to sit and enjoy the evening breeze. Vultures and bats are not very uncommon at other places too hence not much to talk about!!
Now let me tell you a couple of stories about my encounter with such monkeys!!
A month back a nice saturday afternoon I was busy cleaning rooms (this day with a vacuum cleaner) and I hear some noise from kitchen, first I thought my wife is back and must he hungry hence went straight to the kitchen but when I saw what I saw, it scared me to the core! there was a big monkey sitting next to the gas stove (on the kitchen working slab) and had the atta dubba (a small one) in his hand and was trying to open it. But that’s not the scary part. When he saw me, he started screeming at me! what the hell man, you are in my house, playing with my atta and trying to scare me? (that’s another fact that he was successful in doing so). With the vacuum cleaner to my rescue I was able to send him away from the kitchen door but not before he took that dubba with him. The adventure continued…I kept an eye on him as to where he is going…I thought he might get help from his friends to get the box opened but then they are not that smart after all! He left the box next to the staircase window and left.
Another encounter is very similar. This time in one of the rooms. It was a lazy Sunday evening when I heard some water dripping noise, that was strange as the noise was not coming from any of the bathrooms!!! When my wife checked she shouted to scare the creature away – what she saw was alarming – a small monkey in our room trying to take a daal packet away (the packet was torn hence the falling daal was making that sound of water dripping). But wait, how the hell did he get in? the room window has grills (with a gap of no more than 4 inches) ! well, the answer was revealed when he left – between those rods! But wait, that was not as smooth as it sounds here, it was not before he tried scaring my wife (and me) – with his mouth open and screaming – similar to what the earlier fellow did!!
From that day we keep all our windows closed, door closed – open only when are are siting next to the door.
But today I was caught as I did a mistake! I opened the drawing room door (not more than 6 inches wide) and was siting on the sofa reading newspaper (7:30am) and I heard a thump – I knew instantly whats going on. as soon as I turned and started walking towards the kitchen I saw a big monkey walking back to the drawing room balcony (from the kitchen) like I said there was nothing interesting in my kitchen at that time, he might look at other 699 kitchens!!
For more wildlife stories – stay tuned!