In addition to grooming one another, the chimpanzees sometimes enjoy grooming their caregivers. To keep everyone safe, our fingers never penetrate the caging, but the chimps can extend their fingers through the caging and make contact with the backs of our hands (or the bottom of our shoes, as you will see in this video).
Grass forages and family photos
We recently discovered that the chimps are crazy about grass. Today we picked some fresh grass from the pasture on the grounds and spread it in the chimpanzees’ outdoor enclosure. Here are some pictures of Annie and Jody enjoying the forage. Unfortunately, the pictures were not able to capture Annie’s delighted food squeaks.
And here are a couple of pictures of JB serving lunch outside yesterday. The second one is a complete family photo!
Troll Dreads
As part of our continued efforts to encourage Foxie to use more varied enrichment — and hopefully one day nest with something soft! — Diana created the ultimate troll hat/wig. As you’ll see in the video, we at CSNW are not above looking silly for the purpose of entertaining the chimps.
P.S. As I was typing this, Diana caught Foxie lying on a blanket in the playroom (which I believe is a first-time occurrence)!
More fun than a blanketful of trolls
In an effort to encourage Foxie to explore more types of enrichment, Diana had the idea to tie several trolls into a blanket. Foxie carried this “troll blanket” around with her today for quite awhile, sometimes walking tripedally while cradling the blanket in her free arm. The troll blanket also inspired some great play between Foxie and Jody: