Bartholomew's boundaries

We have had several close encounters between the baboon, our dogs and Maverick, the male cat. I am quite happy to have Bartholomew outside our compound but on four occasions he has been inside our compound, sitting in one of the trees over our tents.

The first time this happened we were still in bed when we heard our German Shepherd, Madonna, barking. We leapt out of bed and saw Madonna charging towards Bartholomew. Luckily, Bartholomew got a fright, jumped out of the tree that he was in, fled towards the compound fence and only stopped when he felt that he was a safe distance from Madonna. He then turned and eyed out this strange creature that had run at him and it took a bit of persuading to get him to leave the compound.

The same thing happened 3 days later. This time it was Maverick’s turn to chase Bartholomew. Chris ran out, stick in hand, just in time to see Maverick running after Bartholomew with his hair on end, looking very fierce.

Luckily for us, Bartholomew does not seem to be aggressive in any way. If he was he could very easily have killed any one of our animals. Instead we continue to be a source of great amusement and entertainment for him. On most mornings he sits on one of the 4 huge rocks overlooking our compound, watching us while we do our exercises in the morning or in one of the trees close to our shower area where he is able to look across to Mvimwa Island (Fisherman’s Island). But we are still very careful with him and always make sure to chase him out of our compound so that he knows where his boundaries are.