It is 10:30 in the morning. Children and teenagers are making a racket in front of the boundary wall of Dhaka University's Institute of Social Welfare and Research, not far from the Bir Uttam Habibur Rahman gate of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB). A short distance away, a number of monkeys, big and small, sit on the wall and the trees beside it.
The children were buying bananas and bread from pavement stalls and feeding them to the monkeys. Seeing the commotion, passers-by also stopped to watch the monkeys eat.
The monkeys showed not the slightest fear. There was no uproar or scrambling about. Whoever offered them food, they ran up to them. Baby monkeys clung to their mothers' chests, suckling as they watched the others eat. Some onlookers recorded the scene on their mobile phone cameras.
Where did they come from?
Everyone was asking the same question: where had so many monkeys come from? Local tea-stall owner Kamal Hossain said that for the past few days more than a dozen monkeys, big and small, had been seen in the trees of the Social Welfare Institute campus.
He said they had probably come from the nearby BGB campus, since in this area monkeys are only seen in the trees inside BGB. On the first day they appeared, all the monkeys looked hungry and tired.
Since passers-by and others have been buying bananas and bread for them over the past few days, they have become a little more lively. But he said these monkeys do not snatch food or leap from tree to tree.
Shahjahan, a resident of the nearby Notun Paltan Line area, said his house is right beside the BGB wall. He has seen troops of monkeys in the trees along the BGB boundary wall, but had never seen monkeys wandering openly on the street like this.
Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
Comments
(0)