cattails

Greens for the Queen

July 27, 2023 by Anna

The time of year is upon us when greens and browse items are especially plentiful. Negra took advantage of today’s forage by eating her way through ample amounts of mini bok choy brought to us by Charlie’s Produce who delivers our weekly produce orders and a browse forage of cattails picked fresh from our nearby pond. If you want to help keep the chimpanzees stocked up on produce, consider becoming a Produce Patron. Many happy food grunts from Negra and her fellow sanctuary residents to all our Produce Patrons!

Chimpanzees and Cattails?

August 4, 2018 by Diana

The Cle Elum Seven chimpanzees and their relationship with cattails goes way back. In fact, I can’t think about cattails without thinking about Burrito covered in cattail fluff way back in 2008.

We have a couple of big ponds and some wetland areas around the property and the cattails look just beautiful right now, so Anna chopped some down to add to the chimps lunch forage on the hill today.

Jody in particular likes fresh cattails and she eats both the long green leaves and the brown flowers that remind me of corn dogs. After foraging for the lunch veggies, Jody collected as many cattails as her mouth could carry and headed for the greenhouse.

Meanwhile, Negra had the escher structure to herself and was enjoying all of the food I had scattered from top to bottom.

In fact, Negra climbed up higher than I’ve ever seen her go before!

Today, Negra brought a friend with her on her adventures – a green-haired Strawbery Shortcake doll.

After a good long time foraging, Negra too went back to the greenhouse. When she spotted Jody’s cattails, she decided she should take a couple. Being the Queen, Jody allowed this theft to happen.

Negra really has been a new chimpanzee lately. Not the food-stealing – that’s been part of her repertoire for a while, but climbing up high and staying out on the hill for a long time is new. She’s also been very playful with us caregivers. There is absolutely nothing better in this world than seeing Negra laugh and be happy and relaxed. She just continues to remind us that everyone grows into themselves on their own timescale. Welcome to the sanctuary, New Negra.

Annie Bird’s Birthday

September 10, 2016 by Diana

Today we celebrate Beautiful Annie’s birthday. For the breakfast party in the greenhouse, we chose to have a bird theme because of the bird noises that she, uniquely, makes when she is relaxing.

The theme turned tropical with coconut, watermelon (that’s tropical, right?), pineapple, and fruit smoothie. Plus some primate chow, which Annie is fond of:

Also included were headbands (on the decorative slinky below) because of Annie’s sense of fashion.

Her friend Francoise even sent a book from Canada for us to interact with Annie (I did, later in the day, but didn’t get any photos – we’ll continue to have fun with this book, I can tell – Foxie and Jamie were very interested in it too!)

Later in the day, for the lunch forage, we had some of Annie’s favorite foods: green onions, leeks, cattails, and romaine lettuce. And we included some roses from the garden, mini-peppers, and more primate chow.