Burrito, Annie Jody, Foxie, Missy, Jamie, and Negra arrived in June of 2008. Their first experience of snow at the sanctuary (though they may have encountered it earlier in their lives) was almost exactly eleven years ago today. If you can believe it, we’ve been doing the blog this entire time, so you can take a look back at that post, which includes a video, right here.
That was before the greenhouse was a greenhouse with a roof and removable walls, so the chimps just leaned outside of their indoor rooms and grabbed handfuls and mouthfuls of snow. Seriously, watch the video.
It was such an exciting and endearing first at the sanctuary that Seattle’s King 5 television station shared the video on air.
Eleven years later, snow is still an exciting winter treat that produces anticipation and food grunts. There are many, many blog posts that feature snow. We often talk about how it’s the perfect food enrichment because it has zero calories, lasts a long time, and it’s both plentiful and free this time of year.
Here are some photos from today of Jody finding some ice and snow for snacking:
This one of her scurrying inside with her quickly diminishing treat is a little blurry:
Burrito was making raspberry noises at me this morning, and I thought he was trying to convince me to get him a banana–he knows I’m a big sucker and have been giving him pretty much whatever he wants as he recovers. Eventually, I realized what he actually wanted was some of the good stuff that had blanketed the outdoors.
He was pleased when I finally figured it out and gave him a special delivery:
Mave, Willy B, and Honey B’s reaction has not been the same. They do not know what the fuss is about at all.
Mave spent quite a bit of time in the chute today with the sun shining, but she didn’t go down to the area that still had snow:
I tried to convince Honey B that it was a a great treat by eating some myself and then placing some in the fencing for her.
This was her reaction:
Will they grow to love it, or will eating snow remain a strange custom that these three chimpanzees from California do not appreciate? We’ve got a couple more months to find out.
