Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
You may notice in this video that the chimps often hold the snow out on their extended lower lip to inspect it. This behavior is common with wadges, the clumps of fibrous foods such as seeds and leaves that chimpanzees chew and suck the juice out of (see below). For some reason, chimps love to inspect their wadges as they chew them. Perhaps snow falls into the same category to them, or maybe it’s just too cold to keep in their mouths.
With Thanksgiving approaching, we’d like to give our thanks to a very special supporter. Kathleen Flynn is an architect who has donated her considerable talents to many projects, from public memorial spaces to affordable housing for people in rural and underserved communities. We connected with Kathleen through the 1% Program of Public Architecture, a service that links organizations in need of design assistance with architects willing to donate their time, and we’re both excited to collaborate on a new project for the sanctuary. Through her firm, Wild Goose Architecture, Kathleen has been helping us design our new veterinary clinic addition and develop master facilities and site plans for the sanctuary.
On her website, Kathleen notes that she takes inspiration from the wild goose, which the ancient Celts viewed as “energetically quirky”. Kathleen, if you’re looking for energetic quirkiness, you’ve come to the right place…
One of my favorite things so far about Young’s Hill is watching Missy run at full speed. She is like a spring that was coiled up for decades, just waiting to be released. Every time she goes outside, she runs up and down the hill, for no apparent reason other than for the joy of it.
I was surprised by how moved I was when I first noticed that I could actually hear her running…the sound of her hands and feet pounding the ground and her heavy, rhythmic breathing with each stride.
We were talking today about how it seems like Missy is eager for the other chimps to become as comfortable as she is on the hill so that she will have someone to play with out there. Many of the other chimps are still in the cautious exploration stage, but not Missy. She waited 36 years for a chance to run, and now she’s ready for the most epic game of chase ever.
I think Foxie enjoyed the Halloween party.
Yesterday, Jamie was sitting in the greenhouse when she saw a squirrel running across the hill. The squirrel made it back safely to its den before Jamie could catch up, but unfortunately for the squirrel, Jamie now knows the location of its den. So of course she went to work trying to flush him out with a couple of bamboo canes. Here’s what we found when we went into the enclosure today:
This afternoon, Missy was returning from a trip she made to collect grass from the hill when she heard a strange noise coming from the same area. In this video, you can see her calling Jamie for backup. When the noise ceased, Missy and Jamie gave up and returned to eat their grass in the greenhouse.
I have no idea what was going through Foxie’s mind as she walked around the entire perimeter of Young’s Hill on that first day out, but since then, she has been extremely reluctant to go back out. Everyday she tries, but as soon as she gets about 20 feet from the doorway she freezes in her tracks. Obviously the whole experience of being outdoors is overwhelming to her.
Her friends have been encouraging her to go out and to remain out once she is there. But they know that she is scared and they don’t try to push her beyond her comfort zone.
The other day I saw something amazing. Missy came out of the tunnel with a troll in her mouth, and Foxie was trailing behind her. Missy doesn’t care for trolls, so I thought that perhaps Missy was using the troll as a lure to try to help Foxie get outside. And in a way, she was..but it was Foxie that initiated it! Since then, I’ve seen Foxie go through this routine three times with Missy. Foxie begins by stomping around the greenhouse, which is an invitation for someone to go out to the hill with her. When Missy joins her, they both pause and Foxie delicately hands over her troll. She then waits for Missy and the troll to lead the way up the hill.
