There is one thing in life brings out Sheba’s skeptical side, and that’s the monkeys at the office!

Here, a family of three (father, daughter and son) share a two-room outdoors apartment and enjoy life walking around the trees (as they would in the wild, prior to feeding), feeding three time a day, grooming in between, playing chase in mid-air and when given the opportunity, wage war against the Eden guard dogs.

This is Rez, our twenty-something year old baboon patriarch. When I was a child, he considered me his equal and I have lots of scars to show for it. Today, greetings are important and he portrays his peaceful intentions by grunting in a subordinate manner. After the initial greeting (taking for granted that it’s a good day and he’s in a good mood…) he will settle down and eventually ask me to groom him, which I will, when no intruders are around. You see, baboons are fairly easily provoked, and it only takes a “bad look” from someone to get this baboon warrior all pumped up and when that happens, you don’t want to be in his way, even if you would happen to be his best friend.

The other two members of the flock are Rez’ youngest offspring: four year old daughter Ladie Rose Amalia, and three year old Julius, who lost his mother when he was just a few weeks old and too young to fend for himself.

Although Amalia was just a year older than her orphaned younger brother, she adopted him and carried him around her belly just like her mother had. As for feeding time, this little youngster had to be bought with enourmous amounts of goodies before she considered sharing with her brother, but after a few months, he was strong enough to come down and feed himself.

The two of them are still very close, and whenever something out of the ordinary happens (such as a Rhodesian Ridgeback arriving from Sweden…) Julius hides behind his not-so-courageous elder sister, and the two look at things together.

Dog checks out monkey

Monkey checks out dog

This is the closest they’ve got, and for the time being, Sheba has no plans of getting any closer… Although they could in theory become friends, I don’t think they will. The monkeys have a history of fooling the dogs big time when they are quite young puppies and the dogs have a history of never forgiving. When Aslan was nine weeks old, Rez lured him to contact pretending to offer friendly terms. Poor Aslan learned the hard way as he ran off with a piece of fur missing, but he then abided his time, waiting until he was bigger than the “big bad baboon” and then taunted Rez for the rest of Aslan’s living life. Kinza is another wounded spirits, but unlike Aslan who only taunted Rez (who’s the evil one in this story, although my brother and I always insist that Rez is good deep, deep down…) Kinza likes the provoke the younger baboons. But Sheba doesn’t seem to want to get involved in any monkey business and keeps her guard at a safe distance.