Tickets for tomorrow night’s Sippin’ for the Seven are sold out. Thanks to everyone who bought tickets – we’re looking forward to a fun evening!
Self treatment
Chimpanzees spend a lot of time grooming injuries on themselves and others. In fact, we rely heavily on observation of their behavior towards one another to monitor their health. For example, a chimpanzee may develop a small abscess from a bite or scratch during a fight. Depending on the location of the injury, the caregivers may not notice it at first. But the chimpanzees sure do, and this will often alert us to its presence. And while we tend to be a bit overly cautious and provide oral antibiotics, the chimpanzees do a pretty good job of grooming and draining injuries to promote healing on their own. This makes sense, of course, because free-living chimpanzees often suffer injuries and do not rely on humans for treatment. But it is fascinating to watch. Missy seems to be the most adept at using tools (in this case a piece of grape vine) to groom herself.
Wine tasting (and wine nesting)
This weekend, CSNW supporters will be enjoying a sampling of some of Washington’s best wines at our Sippin’ for the Seven fundraiser. We didn’t want the chimps to feel left out, so we gave them their own wine tasting, of sorts.
Yesterday, Diana and I took a drive down to Boushey Vineyards in Grandview, WA. Owners Dick and Luanne Boushey were kind enough to allow us to collect vine trimmings for the chimps (thank you!). Today’s trimmings were from French clone Syrah vines – soon we’ll get to see if they prefer Merlot 🙂
In addition to eating the vines, the chimps enjoyed nesting with them…especially Jody, as you might have guessed. This morning, she seemed intent on outdoing her paper nest from last week.
Jody’s giant nest
One of our volunteers brought a giant roll of paper for the chimps (thanks David!), and with it, Jody created one of the greatest nests of all time.
Getting there the hard way
Jamie is the type of person that really enjoys using all of her abilities, both mental and physical. She loves a challenge. If something is too easy, she’ll find a more difficult way of doing it, just for fun.
Sometimes she gets this look in her eyes and you know she’s up to something. You can almost follow her thought process as she looks around and figures out what tools she’s going to need to get the job done, or what series of moves she going to need to do to accomplish her goal.
Here’s a brief example. Jamie wants to move about four feet over to say hello to Denice. And how does she get there?
Negra
It’s been so exciting to watch the chimps enjoy the greenhouse these past few days. Today was completely overcast, with temperatures in the upper 30’s for most of the day. Even so, it’s about 60 degrees in the greenhouse, and the chimps have been out there all day.
Even Negra has abandoned her usual spot on the play room catwalk to make nests outside. This is more than we could have hoped for.
In fact, the greenhouse has created a new problem for us. As I write this, at 5:30, I am waiting for Jamie to come back inside so I can close the door for the night (the greenhouse does get cold at night). But she doesn’t seem to care how late I have to stay 🙂 What a good problem to have!
Lunch in the sun
Diana and I took some photos this afternoon while the chimps enjoyed a lunch forage outside. It was great to see Burrito enjoying the sunshine.
Negra stuffed as many onions in her mouth as she could and headed back to the play room.
Jamie went after the brussels sprouts, but apperantly not before contemplating them first.
She also spent some time dipping her onions in buckets of water, and then pouring the water from one container into another. This is typical Jamie. She has such an active mind, and she will often make projects for herself to keep busy.
