He’d run into a scent post, indicating the vervet was now on his own territory, and not, as we call it in the city, the “common area”. This was the vervet’s neighborhood, not downtown, not the mall.
Invisibly the rules of engagement just changed, all according to certain unbendable laws of Nature. And indeed the baboon, still five times the size of his prey, called off his attack altogether and turned and ambled back into the more familiar common ground, as if was the bodega at the corner of 145th and Douglas Avenue, where he spent his time with his mates, looking for a mark to walk by.