Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
The weather was great. The competition was fierce. The times were good.
Supporter Monica B. found the BEST EVER mascot for the Roslyn Olympics. Meet Stanley the Troll Dog:
Check out some more of the photos from the Roslyn Olympics that J.B. took:
Who’s coming next year? We’re going to try to get the park on the 2nd week in July on a Saturday. Big thanks to ARRF Animal Rescue and the sponsors of the 2012 games!
Today, the chimpanzees were being pretty playful, especially Missy and Burrito. I wasn’t able to get the best video while trying to play tug-o-war with Missy, but I got a short clip. Burrito was playing a lot with Jackie at the barn doors. You’ll want to watch until the very end!
Foxie just looks so content in this photo.
Sunny summer days are amazing, but so is getting to relax in some cool shade.
The enrichment at the sanctuary changes daily, and we try to come up with different things to entertain the chimpanzees. As I was picking up trolls that had clearly been bitten into (some were ripped almost in half!) I was thinking that there must have been some sort of troll forage. Jackie confirmed that they did indeed have frozen watermelon in troll dolls as a forage the day before. I started wondering what the average person must think when they hear that caregivers fill troll dolls with frozen watermelon as a fun project. It must sound so strange! But the chimpanzees really love stuff like that, and we try to take advantage of the kind of enrichment we have (and we have TONS of trolls since they are a Foxie favorite) and make it even more enriching.
Today we set up a blanket fort—we tied blankets together and made a really low ceiling for the chimps to walk under. It was sort of like the day we draped some blankets over the barrels, but this was bigger and more spread out. And it was enriching for the chimps, so I think we succeeded in our goal!
The blanket fort lasted a pretty long time, however I just saw Jody taking it down in order to nest with the blankets. She seemed pretty content with all the blankets she managed to collect since they were tied together.
Foxie’s new love of Dora the Explorer continues, but that doesn’t mean she’s dropped troll dolls out of her life.
She spent some time with a Dora and a troll doll and a mirror today:
A sure sign of Foxie’s contentment is when she rubs her toes together, like in the photo below and in this video from a couple of years ago. If you’re wondering what the powdery stuff on Foxie’s feet is – it’s pollen. The pollen has been blowing off the trees like snow all week!
Annie spent some time grooming Missy in the greenhouse this morning:
Grooming eventually turned into some mellow, silly play. My favorite thing about this video is that by looking at Missy’s serious face, you’d never know she was playing.
