The report of an alleged attack on a baboon with a pit bull and a pole with a nail in it is “completely wrong”, say those who were involved.
|||Cape Town - The report on an incident at Castle Rock involving an alleged attack on a baboon by a pit bull and a pole with a nail in it, is “completely wrong” and gives totally the wrong impression, say those who were involved.
An angry Rosalind Bean-Bolnick, owner of the property Blue Gums where the incident happened, and her son Jeremy Bean, owner of the pit bull named Oscar, contacted the Cape Argus to set the record straight after a report in Tuesday’s editions.
The report was based on a record of the incident in the report last month by baboon management service provider Human Wildlife Solutions (HWS) to the authorities.
“In our opinion the report is completely wrong and the circumstances were very different,” Bean said.
“The baboon was in the house and basically the fight started on the property. They (dog and baboon) rolled down into the road and Joe (his friend Joe Heywood) and myself were desperately trying to get them apart. We did everything we could.”
Explaining the stick with a nail, Bean said Heywood had pulled a stave from the fence to use as a tool to separate the fighting animals.
“That was literally a piece of the fence. He just ripped it off in the heat of the moment and he was actually beating my dog with it, not the baboon, and he wasn’t using the side with the nail. We were trying to resolve the situation and it was touch-and-go between the animals.”
The unfortunate perception had been created that they were the same as gangsters who set their pit bulls on baboons, Bean said.
“It comes across that there was this cruelty element when there clearly wasn’t, and unfortunately we’ve been painted with the same brush.”
This was confirmed by Heywood, who said it appeared that two separate incidents involving a pit bull and a baboon had become conflated.
“We also care (about baboons) and we were trying to sort out the incident, we definitely weren’t out to attack the baboon.”
Bean-Bolnick said they’d enjoyed an amicable relationship with baboons at Blue Glums over more than a decade, and she denied ignoring a request from the monitors not to leave dog food outside, as stated in the report.
She confirmed that Oscar had got a very firm grip on the baboon during the fight but said this had been on its tracking collar and not on the animal itself.
“I was shocked when I read the report. That baboon was back two weeks later, sitting on top of my house as relaxed as can be, and there wasn’t a mark on him. Why would he be back if such a terrible thing had happened to him?”
She pointed out that her husband, Joel Bolnick, was chairman of the Castle Rock Conservancy that promoted conservation in the area, including of the baboons.
john.yeld@inl.co.za
Cape Argus