A tribute to a few of Jamie’s favorite things.
For the thrill of it
When Jamie decides she wants to go for a walk with a caregiver, there is almost always one chimp that decides to join the hike. Quite often, it’s Missy, but it isn’t always so obvious at first. Instead of following close behind, Missy makes sure to give Jamie a big head start so she can properly race to catch up.
Missy finds so much happiness in simply running as fast as she can, it’s hard to imagine her previous life spent warehoused in a basement.
Rainy day puzzles
A rainy day like today seemed like a good time to introduce the chimps to a new enrichment food puzzle. Before we fully integrate a puzzle into the chimps’ enrichment schedule, we often do a trial run where we try and gauge the chimps’ level of interest in the puzzle, as well as how difficult it is for them to complete. We ultimately want the puzzle to be really time consuming for them (to keep their minds and bodies busy), but not so much that they give up and stop trying. Today we put out a few bath towel knots that had walnuts tied into them. To really make the puzzle challenging, the towels were dipped in water and frozen prior to the chimps receiving them. All throughout the rest of our cleaning this morning, we heard the thumping sounds of the chimps working on their puzzles in the loft of the playroom. I think we can consider this trial run a success, minus the fact that I didn’t manage to get any photos to document the event. Once we get photos, we will add these Frozen Towel Knots to the Enrichment Database on our website. If you haven’t checked out the new look of the database on our beautifully redone website, I highly recommend it!
Because no blog is complete without photos, here is a selection from the vault:
A burst of happiness
When some of the chimps are feeling a bit silly and relaxed, they have this little routine they do where they lay on their back and flail their arms and legs in the air and side to side for a few seconds. It’s sort of like a shiver of joy, contentment and energy runs through them.
Here’s Foxie’s upside down moment she had this morning on Young’s Hill:
With that out of her system, Foxie and Dora continued their day together:
Added enrichment
Believe it or not, Jamie, the self-appointed boss, has a tendency to hoard enrichment food puzzles. If we put out a dozen Kongs with peanuts in them, Jamie always winds up with a big pile and more than her fair share. To encourage “sharing,” we try to spread out the enrichment as far as possible and we attach a lot of the chimps’ puzzles to the enclosure caging. We use padlocks to hang raisin boards and other puzzles and we have recently introduced dipper tubes which we screw into fixed spots on the outside of their enclosure. With a lot of focus and determination, Jamie has made these new dipper tubes into her own unique personal project. As you’ll see, she loves a good challenge!
The infectious joy of grabbing feet
Last week after the chimps’ enjoyed a St. Patrick’s Day party in the greenhouse, Jamie and I went for a walk around Young’s Hill together. Like many of Jamie’s walks, this gives some of the other chimps an excuse to spend some more time outdoors as well. Missy was a bullet of energy, running around starting games of chase with Foxie and Annie. Her signature move of the day? The foot grab!
Missy going in for the “kill” on an unsuspecting Foxie:
Foxie chased Jamie down the hill making similar moves to grab Jamie’s feet:
Slow to rise
Negra isn’t exactly a morning person, so it’s always a surprise to see her without a blanket over her head when we first arrive at the sanctuary. This morning, half her face seemed to be still drooping with sleep and she had some serious bed head:
The sight of staff caregiver Katelyn arriving (with some fresh strawberries in tow) was just the boost she needed to start her day: