invasion

"Excuse me," I scream. "What do you think you are doing?"

It sounds so exotic: monkeys in my mango trees. Actually it drives me insane. They get braver by the day, now the semi-Rottweiler is dead. Breakfast-time, they scamper metres away from us to pinch the bananas ripening in the lean-to.

We wave our arms and shout. They bounce on their hind-legs, taunting us. "They've got blue bottoms," my five-year old giggles. Not quite bottoms, but I'll leave it at that.

Two nights ago, I lay awake seething. Rival troops were conducting a turf war by the light of the full moon between the mango and the avocado trees. In desperation, we resorted to a Valium tablet, carefully conserved since my in-laws' last trip camping in the bush near western Chitaki (they down a pill each per night so they're not woken by the lions).

I'll blame it on the lack of sleep. But when I saw them in the loquats the next morning I caught myself shouting like a prim English farmer's wife powerless before the war vets come to take over her homestead.