Animal Welfare
Hill grass
Grass has always been a favorite treat for the Cle Elum Seven, so it’s been interesting to watch their reactions to the grass on Young’s Hill.
Annie loves to eat grass, but seems very uncomfortable walking on it. I’ve been referring to her as our resident gibbon- she walks bipedally and holds her hands out a bit from her sides and her gait is almost more of a waddle than a walk. I can’t say exactly why she does this, but I’m sure it feels strange to walk barefoot on grass after years and years of nothing but concrete.
Jamie, on the other hand, is a natural out there.
And how fun is it to harvest your own treat!?
Most Vigilant Person
I am officially giving the MVP award to Foxie, who has been making it farther and farther everyday on Young’s Hill. She’s gotten some encouragement and motivation from her friends, but today I put out some pieces of pineapple as a forage, and that seemed to be enough incentive for her to make it almost twice as far as she’s gone in the last few weeks! She made it almost all the way to the first platform. Yay, Foxie!
Cirque du Soleil at CSNW
Foxie is our resident acrobat here at the sanctuary. She’s always hanging upside down or doing pirouettes, and loves to engage us in active games where she will do all sorts of different gymnastics. Jamie, as many of our regular blog readers know, is the resident trickster—it’s appropriate that her birthday is on Halloween (just a couple weeks away!)
Watch Foxie being a goof and wait for Jamie to interrupt…
Back to the basics
As exciting as all these posts are about the hill, since not everyone is going out on the hill all the time, it’s resulted in some blog posting-neglect of certain folks. So here’s a photo I took of adorable Burrito this afternoon hanging out in the greenhouse, just like “the old days”. He and Negra are definitely creatures of habit.
Full Speed Ahead!
On day 1 of Young’s Hill, we saw a lot of wrestling from Annie and Missy (shocking, I know!), but since then, we haven’t seen a whole lot of playing on the hill, most likely because there has been so much to do and explore out there that they just haven’t “had the time”. Over the last few days, however, I’ve been noticing them get more and more playful. Chase has been a favorite game lately (apparently, even Gators make good chase partners!). I’m sure after watching the construction all summer, the chimps (or Missy and Jamie at least) have just been waiting for the opportunity to get up to a full speed run! But with 2-acres to explore, even just walking around is such amazing exercise for them. I’m sure they are sleeping like babies at night!
Jamie chases Jacki-gator
Today I was watching the chimps running around on the hill. Jamie and Missy were way in the distance. Missy was sitting on the log bridge up top and I couldn’t even see Jamie! Jody was sitting under the hammock and Foxie was running out and then back in over and over. Jackie hopped into the Gator (our farm utility vehicle) to try and find Jamie, and Missy started to play chase with her. Missy gave up quickly but Jamie was way more excited about it.
Sometimes when we play chase with the chimps, they will fake us out—meaning they will run one direction and then abruptly turn and go the other direction, and we have to try and catch up to them. Well, this is a lot harder to do when you have to turn around a Gator on a steep hill! You’ll see Jamie playing this “fake out” game with Jackie in the beginning of the video.