It's A Jungle Out There

It would be nice if we could all just get along.  Just follow your basic "Golden Rule".  But, oh no, someone always has to take advantage of someone else.  There's always the free-loader, looking for a free lunch or worse, just taking your lunch.

Being green and attempting to work some food into our 50 mile diet, we've been growing our own vegetables in our community garden plot.  What could be more politically correct?  We help out by watering our neighbour's plots.  We do our volunteering.  We are righteous.

Our reward?  Some jackass climbed the chain-link fence and harvested 80% of our carrots.  I suppose the thief thought he was doing me some big favour by leaving me a dozen carrots.  I figured, "that's Calgary for you!".  Crime on the way up, caring and righteousness on the way down.  "It won't be like that in Costa Rica", I thought.

Wrong.  It's worse!

When we arrived at our rental, Donna pointed out the various banana varieties that were on the property.  "Those small red bananas are the best.  They're delicious and spicy".  With directions on banana harvesting from our neighbour Peter, I found the machete in the store room, checked its sharpness (I have no idea what I'm doing here) and set it aside for next day's harvesting.

Well next day, like every next day is leisurely paced.  You don't want to just jump out of bed and starting whacking down a banana tree.  You need your coffee.  You need your toast.  You need to check out the beach.  "Yup, still water in the Pacific".  You need to check for wildlife.  Interesting.  "Look, there's monkeys in the trees".  They were monkeys.  As well, they were thieves!

Those cute little Capucine monkeys were having a relaxed time picking and eating all my red bananas.  They were enjoying watching us while they ate every last one.  Not 80%.  Nope, all of them.  Totally brazen and without remorse.

Showing more sense than us and obviously feeling somewhat responsible for the local monkeys, Donna kindly provided us with a bunch of bananas.  "Hang them up until they're ripe, where the monkeys won't get them".

The lengths we have to go to in order to protect our property.  It's absurd!

"And, make sure that you take them down when they're ripe.  Don't leaving them hanging around".

I see.  'Cause it will only get worse.  It's a jungle out there.