I was on a morning walk in a hospital I recently visited in search of birds. I did sight birds, but also monkeys on the terrace of a residential building in the hospitla campus.
During my stay in CMC hospitla campus at Vellore, I was used to the tricks and trpaa the monkeys created. A family of monkeys almost lived on the trees outside the college provision stores. On one occasion, I was walking out of the store with a bunch of bananas in my hand. One monkey jumped in front of me and I froze. Another monkey in that moment grabbed the bananas form my hand and I was left with just two of them in my hand. The monkeys usually grabbed food packets from children and left them frightened.
Anna recalls the days of her life in the women's hostel. The monkeys would enter their rooms and collect whatever food they can get. When the students came back in the evening to their rooms, they only found wrappers of biscuit or bread packets or banana peels in their rooms Anna when she became the warden of women's hostel in the nineties got the rooms fixed with grills to prevent the monkeys from invading the rooms.
It was an annual ritual in the CMC campus that monkeys were trapped and left in the jungles far away, only to return to the campus in about three months.
I spent a while watching a family of three monkeys. As they descended form the trees, the watchman started chasing them away with minimal success. He told me that the monkeys would jump in front of any one who carries a bag with food. So it is their habit.
They can be a health risk as monkey bites can spread zoonotic infection to humans.
It is a yet another challenge for the estate manager of the hospital to keep the monkeys away!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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