Jamie has rules. These rules are created for the humans and as such we are expected to follow them, without question, no shortcuts. These rules are created by Jamie and are subject to change without notice. We’re just along for the ride. 🙂
The past couple of days the chimpanzees cannot get enough of Young’s Hill! Reminiscent of summers past, Jamie has been taking near constant spins around the hill, accompanied by her human caregivers and delightfully, many of the other chimpanzees. The daytime temperatures have been hovering in the low to mid 30’s and somehow this has completely invigorated them all. Perhaps they know what’s on the horizon, literally, as at this point snow is due to start tonight and stick around off and on for the next week at least. But I digress. Back to the rules.
As many of you may know, Jamie often asks us to fetch the utility Gator to race with her around the hill. She used to like the humans to ride in the Gator while wearing her boots. But with me at least, this rule has changed a bit into wanting to have one human drive the Gator AND one human run with her ahead of the Gator. Though it’s always been the obvious rule that the Gator never wins these races, she’s adjusted the rule more recently to seemingly want to run away from the Gator, well ahead of it reaching her and her human companion. Now here’s a specific scenario where she gets very specific with her rules:
Jamie and Burrito will be racing up the hill with two caregivers. Half way up the hill Jamie will decide one of the humans needs to return to the barn and fetch the Gator. She indicates this by walking back down the hill, looking toward the barn and shaking her fist. Jamie speak for “Go get the Gator!” “Now!” She will rarely be deterred from this. Next rule is the absolute.very.second one human leaves to fetch said Gator, Jamie looks at the other human as if to say, “Ruuuunnn!!!” and you are expected to RUN and get as far ahead of the Gator as possible before it even leaves the barn. (Unfortunately for this human, this is also the uphill part). This reminds me a little bit of those silly old games where you’re trying to see how fast you can unlock your door as you pretend a murderer is after you. You know that game, right? No? Well, anyway…
And what if the humans try to skip the rules? Well, you’re going to have to go back to the beginning and do it right. After several runs up and around the hill, this human tried to take a short cut at one point and hitch a lift on the Gator with Chad, at least for uphill portion. We went a short distance, then Jamie abruptly stopped, turned around and marched us back down the hill to the starting point where she gestured for me to get out of the Gator and then run with her ahead of it! Humans need a lot of supervision. At least this one, I guess.
We never know for sure what’s going on in that brilliant, kaleidoscopic mind of hers, but we couldn’t be more thrilled to get to tag along.
As I revved the Gator (because that’s the most exciting part) and did my best to drive steady, poor Chad was tasked with capturing this wild, blur of a woman from the passenger seat and somehow managed capturing her in all her crazy excited, hair-standing on end, charging across the hill glory:
As Anthony accurately put it today while looking at this photo, Jamie is a hurricane of a chimp woman. Indeed she is. And we love her so. What a privilege to be caught up in her wild winds with her.
The construction guys are working so hard to get the roof on before the snows fly and watched us storming around the hill again and again. I can only imagine what goes through their minds. They asked who ended up winning. Of course, we all know the answer to that. 🙂
