tim's experiment

What would this interesting eyesore be, plonked into the middle of my morning walk? This is a large object. It is taller than I am. It is a monkey trap. Evidently intended for rather large monkeys.

We have always had occasional visits from monkeys becausc we live close to the edge of a country park. Monkey herds which usually prowl well-known visitor spots like the Shing Mun Reservoir or the Old Taipo Road can visit us without crossing any roads. They usually come once a year. I suppose – because monkeys are said to be good at this sort of thing – that some local tree reaches an edible stage and the monkeys stay long enough to strip it. This year for some reason they hung around a bit longer. My suspicion is that they found another source of food … like an insecure dustbin. But I may be doing my neighbours an injustice. Perhaps some shift in monkey territories elsewhere has made our locality more attractive.

Anyway for some reason the monkeys made a few return visits. They certainly on one occasion explored the Clubhouse roof. Rumour in our estate has it that one domestic helper had to shoo a monkey out of the kitchen where she was working. Then the monkeys went again. We have not seen them for weeks.

Meanwhile, however, the bureaucratic wheels were turning. It seems that people who wish to complain about monkeys address themselves to the Agriculture and Fisheries Department. I am not sure why. Monkeys are not agricultural in the usual sense and they are certainly not fish.  Weeks after the last monkey had disappeared the department produced the eyesore, which is clearly labelled as a monkey trap.

This is an imposing piece of machinery, apparently operated hy electricity. It has a sort of double-ended arrangement. There appear to be two gates which close in the middle, so that unwary m0nkeys caught in one end can watch while other simian suckers are caught in the other. But the gates have been fixed open with ziptapes, so I suppose this is now just one big sociable trap with two entrances. I do not think the monkeys actually used this part of the path, but the trap is an awkward monstrosity moved on eight small wheels. More plausible monkey haunts like woods and hillsides are clearly beyond it.

Further doubts about the effectiveness of the machine are raised by the absence of bait. Soon after the trap first appeared it was visited by an AFD team in a van, who threw a load of fruit in it. Over the ensuing week, though, this was gratefully consumed by small animals and insects unthreatened by the trap. So it is now empty. Only a terminally stupid monkey will ever go in it.

Unfortunately this is not the end of the matter. I do not object to the trap because it is ugly, though it is. Nor am I concerned that it will not catch many monkeys, though I shall be surprised if it catches any. I do object that it is dangerous. This is not my view alone: the labels on the machine itself say that it is dangerous. But there it sits, a mere ten yards from the busy footpath which connects the local public car park with the Lions’ Lookout, a small tourist attraction but one which produces a steady stream of visitors. The area is much frequented by unleashed children and dogs. They are more likely to end up in the trap than any monkey. The department has in the past deployed smaller traps which could be put on hill-sides and behind fences. The monstrosity should be removed.