When your boss orders you to stop cleaning and start playing, you make time!
Continued construction progress
We have a lot of people to thank for helping us work on this important stage. As you may already know, staff caregivers operate the chimpanzees’ current doors using a remote controlled pneumatic lever system. In our new Phase 1 chimpanzee area, we will be using a hydraulic door operating system. As you can watch in the above video, we got to see the first door in motion this morning!
To get this first door up and moving, Ozzie from Spencer Fluid Power donated a hydraulic power unit to the sanctuary. Gary and his team from Sage Mechanical donated and installed all of our hydraulic pipe, fittings and covers. The actual doors were given to us last winter by Central Washington University before the former Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute building was demolished. Here’s JB’s post about it from February 2018. We are so grateful to all the members of our community who have been so willing to donate their time and money to helping with this exciting expansion project. We can’t wait to Bring them Home!
More joy!
What’s your favorite play move in this video? I’m partial to the “Drag a Sitting Missy.” Second place would probably have to go to “Squish a Sitting Missy.”
Feel the joy!
Today was filled from top to bottom with sunshine (prime weather for wrestling in the greenhouse). One window in particular was the hot spot made popular by Missy and Foxie who had a wild game going that included multiple play partners.
Missy (back) with Foxie (front):
Jody, Missy and Foxie:
Annie joins the party and Jody leaves to make room for her on the windowsill:
Careful exploration
Foxie is quite small for a chimpanzee. This comes in handy when you want to be light on your feet!
Just because she can
The chimps often use straws for drinking things that aren’t within reach (such as evening food puzzle drink buckets that we set outside their enclosures).
Sometimes they like to improvise and use straws, just because they can (not because it’s necessary). Annie for instance, likes to bring her own straw along to drink her morning smoothie (that we usually serve straight to her lips from the cup). Here’s Jamie making an interesting tool use choice.
Glacial archaeology
Last week melted the majority of the snow covering the sanctuary, but we’ve had a couple of cold and dry days this week. The chimps seem unfazed by the drop in temperature and have still been eager to explore Young’s Hill each morning (albeit at a slightly faster pace). As the chimpanzees wrapped up their morning adventures, Foxie uncovered a lone Strawberry Shortcake doll that must have spent a great deal of this winter covered in snow. Being the responsible doll owner that she is, she gingerly took her buried treasure back to the warm playroom to thaw out.
