A baboon has had the whole of Paarl abuzz today as it walked through the streets of central Paarl, before adopting the Drakenstein Municipal headquarters in the Berg River Boulevard as it’s home.
The male baboon was first noticed in the industrial area of Distillery Street, close to the Berg River on the weekend. Here it settled on a factory roof, before again disappearing on Monday morning.
Hereafter numerous sightings of the baboon where made in both the CBD as well as neighbourhoods, after he found his way to the municipal headquarters where it caused a stir among both employees and customers all day long.
The baboon presumably found it’s way into Paarl from the nearby Du Toits Kloof mountains which are densely inhabited by baboons. But it remains a mystery as why it left it’s natural, and safe habitat, to enter the heart of Paarl.
The many residents of Paarl who came to see this spectacle at the municipality today could not help but wonder whether the baboon was here to attend a council meeting!
The baboon has been circling and climbing up and down the municipal headquarters for hours now and has caused quite a headache for law-enforcement officers as to how they are going to capture and remove the baboon safely.
A law-enforcement officer on the scene said that after consultation with CapeNature on the issue, it was confirmed that the baboon’s relocation rests on the municipality, and not on CapeNature.
In the meantime the municipality has been given a cage-trap to try and trap the baboon, but this has so far been unsuccessful.
This is the first sighting of a baboon within the city limits of Paarl in 11 years, when a loan male baboon wandered the residential edge of Paarl Mountain for weeks, before presumably being killed by farm dwellers in Paarl South.
