Missy loves going through the culvert – she always comes out the other side with a big smile on her face!
Foxie
Sippin’ for the Seven – SOLD OUT!
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?