BABOONS AS CATLLE RAIDERS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 July 1925, Page 4

BABOONS AS CATLLE RAIDERS.

i Kill la li ■ i in “Daily Mail.”) KENYA 10i.0.W, April 15. As incorrigible plunderers of native fruit and grain shanibas ami as thieves of eeirec and sugar from the European plantations hahnons wort 1 blacklisted in Kenya as “vermin’’ in the very early (lays. Xu uni.' suspected then that hahno.ns were cattle raiders. But this crime has now keen brought home to them; a price lias been placed on their heads, and a vigorous campaign for their extermination is on foot. For same years past an alarming epidemic of sheep-slashing and cattle-ripping has broken out every April on Kenya stock ranches. On the larger ranches, running two or three thousand head of sheep over anything up to JO.OOO

acres, as manv as ‘2;!0 Inmhs, and calves wore mutilated in a day. In every case the "minds were long, deep cuts, a.s though viciously slashed with a knife.

The Masai were suspected, for that mucli-maligiied tribe lias never looked kindly on tin' white stock-breeder; hut .Masai cattle were attacked a.s .well, and suspicion then fell on linns, leopards. hyenas, and even on the aardvark, an ant-eater with long, razoredged claws.

Native scouts were set to watch, and tlie marauders were proved to lie none other than the cliaema baboons. Ted by an msiniamizi nyani or “overseer baboon”, as the natives call him. tlie ehaemas send young baboons ahead to reconnoitre.

By loud “haw-hawing” these scouts draw ofF the native herdsmen to one side of the ranch, while the “overseer” with a mob of dog-baboons, stampedes the flocks on the other. Then tlie whole monkey army falls upon the land's. Baboons kill by ripping with the thumb-nail, but if cornered seized their enemy with all four “hands” and literally tear him limb from limb. In such a raid native herdsmen, armed only with bows and arrows, or spears, are helpless. Natives stand in great terror of baboons, as well they may. A (log-baboon is larger .than a mastilF. ami two of them are more than a match for a lion.

When pressed* by hunger they often attack native villages for grain stored in the huts, and it is a practice of some tribes to avert this calamity by making offerings of beer and grain to the alungu-iiyaiii, or baboon gods, mythical spirits who are thought to live in great rocks on baboon kopjes. Such attacks, both on stock and natives, have latterly become so frequent that a reward is now offered by the Kenya Game Department for ever baboon shot, trapped, or poisoned, alive or dead, brought in.