Carnage!
More baboons had slipped inside my house as I was pursuing my perpetrators. This time I grabbed the garden hose, turned it on and ran into my front door ‘guns blazing’.
Another Interesting Fact About Baboons…
Baboons don’t like getting sprayed with water ( a small God send). They took one look at the hose pipe and made a run for it without me even having to start spraying. Relief! I ran around my house making sure the windows were all closed so that no more monkey business could ensue.
The Big Clean Up!
To cut a long story short, my house was in a shambles. They had trashed my kitchen. If I hadn’t been so adamant to retrieve my butter I would have saved myself a lot of money and trouble.
After cleaning up the mess (which took me close to an hour), I sat on my couch head in hands, just thinking about the pandemonium that had just taken place. I saw several blatant lessons in what had just happened…
“…this day showed me that even a tub of butter could spark off a suppressed ego…”
The moral to this story for me was the realisation that I am still attached to ‘things’. I thought I had conquered my worldly attachment in my pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. But this day showed me that even a tub of butter could spark off a suppressed ego — this was certainly food for my thought.
A Lesson Learned…
We can all fall off the bandwagon but the real lesson is to get back on. I learnt that it was 
alright to lapse and make mistakes (even if this did mean chasing a wild animal without fear of consequence and putting myself in very real danger). The key is to see and be aware of the lapse and to make every effort to not let it happen again or even just to laugh at it when it does.
So let go of material attachments as everything is unstable and situations are changing constantly. I felt that I had paid good, hard-earned money for that butter and it was mine! But what was even more precious than something I bought at the store was my life. I put myself in danger over a petty ‘issue’ that I constructed in my mind and followed through on and I hope that never happens again.
Sometimes we need to detach from these ‘worldly’ things — after all, we are free spirits and should remain that way.
Free from rigidity.
Free from fear.
Free to live.
Free to choose.
I took the above photographs on the ‘Baboon Walk’ I did.
Cherie Roe Dirksen 
Wow , very brave……..and so funny …and so dangerous! But knowing you the way I do , picturing you do that brought back memories of the things I love about you ……..yes we all have ego……but you didn’t respond in fear like I would have. You didn’t do what many may have done and harmed them through fear………but I am sure you must have been scared? Just a bit? I would have been absolutely terrified!! x ….oh , and was it Lurpak? 🙂
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I think I was more stupid and reactive than brave. I was definitely scared but the adrenaline took over…lol. I was probably more scared of my actions when it was all over and I had time to think about how stupid I had been. I think it was Butro! 😉
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Yaa! A moral to the story. All my possessions are in a POD(portable storage unit), which has over 20 paintings of mine, some very large. Even though I put my blood and sweat into those paintings, my family is so much more important. Thank you for this story.
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The POD is essential! I once lost a years worth of my art because I didn’t back-up…but, all-in-all, another lesson learnt 🙂 xxx
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