Young’s Hill party forage

I mentioned earlier on the blog that today is the second anniversary of the opening of Young’s Hill. Watch the video of their first day out here and check out the previous post for some photos of the chimps on that very emotional and moving day!

Today we wanted to celebrate the anniversary in the best way we know how for chimps—a big food forage! The chimps usually are served their meals (so we know that everyone is getting appropriate portions) but a few times a week we do put out a forage for them to do what chimps would do in the wild. In order to scatter the food around and make the forages last for awhile, we usually cut up the food into small chunks so it takes some time for them to find everything.

This time, we not only included a fruit salad of some chopped peaches, raspberries, and grapes, as well as baby carrots and green onions—but we also included WHOLE apples and tomatoes. The chimps were so excited as we headed out to spread the food around! Mixing things up like that keeps the chimps super enriched and happy.

Everyone really loved all the whole apples and tomatoes! Jody was the first to get a hand (and mouth) full!

Jamie collected at least four apples:

Annie:

Burrito searching for goodies:

And then taking a quick rest:

Foxie:

Missy:

Thank you so much to everyone who helped with Young’s Hill, and to everyone who has helped the Cle Elum Seven along this amazing and considerable journey!