Monkeys on the Lawn

When I was growing up my father had a little ditty he used to sing. It began "Oh I wish I were a tumble bug in some manureous place..." He explained to me that a tumble bug or dung beetle rolls a neat ball of manure into which she places on egg. She then buries the whole thing and the manure protects the egg and keeps it moist. On our game drive we spied a tumble bug with its lovely round ball making its way across the road from a large pile of elephant dung. The ball picks up pieces of gravel as it rolls. You can plainly see this in the photo.
One morning while we had our coffee on the patio I looked about and commented that it looked a lot like Hawaii with the green lawns, the plumeria tree on one side and the hibiscus hedge on the other. "Yes," Bill replied, "except for those." And he pointed to a troupe of about two dozen monkeys frolicking on the lawn. There was on large dominant male and the rest were moms and babies. The babies would scamper about and then hang on for dear life under the moms while they climbed a tree or ran down the lawn. We knew they were about somewhere because on the day we moved in and put our groceries in the kitchen Bill went out to the car to get another load and on his return found a package of hamburger buns on the lawn. It had been torn open and one and a half buns were missing. They were our buns and we hadn't even seen the thief come in and steal them. You can believe we kept a close watch on open doorways after that and we always put our bread in the bread box.