I love Jamie. I love how smart and inquisitive she is. I love that sometimes she gets a glint in her eye and I just have to wonder what exactly she’s up to. I love that she likes to use tools, even to groom her caregivers or hunt snakes. I love that she makes quiet moaning sounds when she is doing something she really enjoys (here’s a really old video that demonstrates that). I love how she watches us not-so-clever humans set out food puzzles or after dinner treats, and as soon as we open the door to let the chimps in, she approaches the task like a well-rehearsed football play, usually getting the most treats while the other chimps randomly move through the area looking for goodies. I love that she sometimes chooses the complicated course of action. Like today – instead of mundanely walking across the playroom, she climbed up on the white industrial food container and used the caging of the windows and doors to pull herself around the perimeter of the room.
I love her intense love of boots. On Wednesday, I gave a presentation about the chimps to the Rotary Club of Yakima Sunrise. I dressed up more than I normally do and wore some boots that I don’t wear very often. When I returned home, I thought I should go up and see Jamie to show her my boots. She was thrilled. Even though I was wearing pants that covered them up, as soon as I walked in the building Jamie ran down the stairs to get a closer look. I pulled up my pant leg to show her the whole boot and she ran to the greenhouse, and then she ran onto Young’s Hill, even though it was pretty chilly outside. I ran all the way around Young’s Hill twice, with her cheating a little bit on her side by bypassing the top of the hill, but meeting me at the bottom again. And she closely inspected the boots when I was back in the human area of the greenhouse.
In yesterday’s blog post, J.B. revealed that Jamie knows a thing or two about throwing poop. And we’ve mentioned in the past about how Jamie is a pretty insecure leader.
I told J.B. today that I was thinking about writing a post about how complicated Jamie is, and he said, “do you mean moody?” I said, yes, but I was going to call it complicated.
Even though it’s not fun to have poop thrown at me, I do love that I never quite know what to expect from Jamie. She might be in a goofy stand on her head mood, or a play all day with Foxie mood, or a no one else is allowed to play mood, or an artistic mood, or a destroy something mood, or a cunning tool-using mood, or a grumpy put you in your place poop throwing mood (sorry, no previous blog post to link to for that one).
She’s not one-dimensional, that’s for sure.
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