Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for September 2010

It’s harvest time!

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Despite the less than desirable season, the garden was once again a success this year. We’ve had many a meal that was exclusively from our garden- for example, I served cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions at lunch, and every bit was from the chimps’ own soil. What a special feeling!

Kale:

Leeks:

Strawberries:

Green Zebra Tomatoes:

We’ve also had an abundance of sunflowers, so I cut several today for the chimps. Some were a bit unsure, but Missy and Jody were especially excited. Negra put hers down and immediately asked for grass instead, but eventually decided they weren’t so bad.

Negra enjoying a sunflower:

Missy:

Jody:

Cowgirl Jamie

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Because of their opposable toes, chimpanzees have feet more similar to our hands, therefore their feet are quite wide. So, I’d say Jamie seemed very proud to find a boot wide enough that she could squish her feet into.

**Editor’s Note**
For those of you unfamiliar to our organization or to those first-time blog readers, please visit this post for our stance on chimpanzees wearing clothes. We put out a variety of enrichment (toys, blankets, clothes, etc.) for the chimps to play with every day. They have the choice to either use something, or not, and in what ever way they see fit. So, if Jamie decides to put on a boot, that is her choice… and on this day, she made the choice to put on the boot. 🙂
-Jackie

Chimps’ Choice

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As you can probably tell from several of our recent blog posts (including the termite board, the browse feeder, hanging juice bottles outside the caging, and frozen troll dolls), we’ve been working really hard to come up with unique enrichment puzzles for the chimps. Last week, Jessie from the Center for Great Apes visited, and told us about Boomer Balls. Boomer Balls are non-toxic, heavy-duty polyethylene plastic balls. At the Center, they drill holes in the boomer balls and freeze Gatorade or juice inside. She says the apes at the Center love it and we suspect the Cle Elum Seven will too. So, for this month’s Chimps’ Choice item, we’re asking for Boomer Balls. Help us enrich the chimps! Send us a 4 1/2″ ball, a 6″ ball, a 10″ ball, or a 10″ snack-n-trim in the next month, and we’ll send you something special in return.

We love volunteers

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Today we had a volunteer work party. About 15 people showed up, despite pretty dismal weather, to plant bamboo, pick pears, help clean up the property, and clean the greenhouse panels. Glamorous stuff! It takes a ton of work to keep things moving around here and we are SO incredibly grateful for all the support we get, from physical labor to financial donations to troll doll packages. So thanks, y’all! We couldn’t do it without you!

Monkeying Around

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I was commenting the other day about how many stories in the media about chimpanzees use some sort of monkey reference, often the term “monkeying around.”

This generally irritates primatologists, partly because it’s just silly and the stories themselves often are not, but mostly because chimpanzees are NOT monkeys. Chimpanzees are great apes like gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and humans. I might as well add that gibbons are called “lesser apes” and they are not monkeys either. There are a few distinct differences between apes and monkeys, the most notable physical difference is the tail – monkeys have them, apes do not.

When I was watching Foxie, Missy and Jody in the outdoor area today, though, I had to admit that “monkeying around” is pretty much exactly how I would describe what they were doing…