Dear Joshua,

This is a reply to your comment by Joshua, aged five, on an earlier post... 

 

What a clever boy you are.  I do hope you don't turn into an internet addict like your mother, though.

 

In answer to your questions (which I am recalling from memory as I can't get into the blog right now)...

 

Monkeys will eat just about anything, though they are very partial to marshmallows and bananas, as you rightly point out.  What they don't like eating, they will open and throw around all over the place.  I met some people with a caravan who said some monkeys had broken in and found a carton of eggs.  Apparently they didn't eat the eggs, but did have a damn fine time chucking the entire dozen at each other and redecorating the inside of the caravan in the process.

 

Baboons - sort of like the big, ugly, hairy cousin of the monkey - like anything that comes wrapped in an esky or garbage bin.  Baboons are also keen on the odd chunk of elephant pooh, which they will spend hours pulling apart and nibbling on (in search of seeds and seed pods, I believe, but no less gross because of this).  I'm sure that if times were tight Baboons would also eat their own pooh.

 

As to lions - be carefull there, young Joshua.  As an African man once said to me; "Why do you go to the bush so often?  Don't you know there are lions there?  They don't bite people - they eat them."  A subtle difference for a five-year-old, I'm sure, but you get the message.  Don't get out of the car, except in camps and demarcated picnic sites.

 

As to the outdoor bathtubs - you don't have to have an outdoor bath, but when you're 18 mummy might let you read "Safari" ($32.95 RRP in all good bookstores) and you might change your perspective on al fresco bathing. 

 

Finally, thanks for the blog comment.  Your mum told me you liked the Zorro movie, and any fan of Catherine Zeta Jones is a friend of mine.