Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimp enrichment

Today’s blog, by Foxie

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It’s one of my favorite things to write the blog and have the opportunity to share the lives’ of the chimps with all of you. That said, there are just days when one has the words, but no photos, or vice versa. Today, for the life of me, I could not get a single photo as the chimpanzees have spent the majority of their day in the loft of the chimp house where it’s warm, grooming one another and napping.

I asked boss lady, Jamie, if she would please write the blog for me to which she responded by throwing a nut at my head. I took that as a “No.” At this point Foxie perhaps took pity on me and came into the smaller front rooms along the human hallway to play and she and I decided to take some “selfies.” Chimpanzees are self-aware and have the ability to recognize themselves and others in mirrors and photos. Many of the chimps enjoy seeing photos of themselves after we take them, or being able to see themselves on the camera as with an iPhone. Foxie particularly seems to enjoy this form of enrichment. So as I held the phone at a safe distance so she could see herself, I snapped the photos as she gestured. (While it’s not safe for the chimps to have a phone, or for us to have them touch it as we hold it, we have been fortunate to have supporters generously donate iPads that the chimps’ can safely interact with through the caging and they do enjoy this occasionally).

So here’s today’s blog, “by Foxie.” (Apologies for the quality, but we were laughing a lot!):

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In this last photo, you can see Foxie is doing a “lip-flip” which I wrote about last week with Annie.

What happened today?

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This morning while we were cleaning the Playroom I noticed that the chimps were pretty quiet in the Front Rooms so I went to check on what they were up to. Annie and Missy were on the ledge in room 2 grooming one another, while Burrito sat quietly nearby. Unfortunately, none of the photos I took of Annie and Missy turned out, but the one of Burrito I think is pretty cute.

Burrito
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Negra was on the ledge in room 3 in one of her blanket nests.
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Foxie and Jody were on the ledge in room 4. Jody was just out of camera view, so I couldn’t get any clear photos, but Foxie wasn’t camera shy as she showed me her dora doll.
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I kept walking back and forth looking for Jamie, figuring she must have been in the Greenhouse or on Young’s Hill gathering snow. I kept looking, but couldn’t find her until Katelyn said she was in room 2. I looked again and realized why I missed her. I initially thought it was a pile of blankets, but upon closer inspection, I could see her eyes and top of her head peaking out from her nest.

This photo was actually taken from the Playroom looking back into room 2.
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After we finished cleaning the Playroom, we set out blankets, various sized boxes filled with enrichment items (boots, dolls, paper, brushes, socks, wooden blocks and tools) and filled their new blue bucket with snow. We also put out lettuce as a forage food.

Missy trying to open one of the boxes.
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Sometimes you just have to put your whole body into it when two hands just doesn’t cut it.
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Foxie took some time to inspect (and lick) the box that one of our new office computers came in (thanks again to Diana Petri for purchasing the computers from our Amazon Wishlist).
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Jamie’s first mission was to gather lettuce before checking out any of the boxes or eating any snow.
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Annie sat and ate snow that she took out of the blue bucket.
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And Jody did her best at staying out of camera view by gathering the lettuce we had put out as a forage and heading up to the loft to make a blanket nest in front of one of the windows that overlooks the neighbors farm.

Closeup Activities!

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In the last couple of weeks caregivers have been busy trying to come up a few additional enrichment activities to help beat off the inevitable extra boredom that comes with a snow filled late December. Yesterday, in addition to extra shoveling on the hill, Katelyn and I set up a special lunch forage in the front rooms at the end of cleaning. We scattered some of their lunch in front of the caging and set out long plastic tubes so there would be an added challenge of using the tools to gather part of their bounty.

I got a couple closeups of some of them enjoying their lunch.

Negra mid-chew:
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Burrito with an orange pepper slice:
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Missy:
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Today we put out three buckets of soapy water in the front rooms (made with small squeezes of non-toxic dish soap). Jamie went to each bucket and grabbed the paper towels that were accompanying the water. She then proceeded to wipe her face vigorously with them.

I later caught Jody enjoying the enrichment in a slightly different way:
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Lots of enrichment to choose from

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Here at the sanctuary, mother nature seems to be making up for the lack of snow the past few years with an abundance over the past few days. This seasonal abundance provides great enrichment for the chimpanzees, who often venture out onto Young’s Hill (the chimps’ outdoor enclosure) to search for the snowy treats. But sometimes on days like today, it snows too hard for them to venture out to gather it themselves, so staff and volunteers bring it in to them.

Today, volunteer caregivers Patti and Stephanie discussed how best to present the snow to the chimps. After figuring out that the snow was not the best for making a snowman, they decided on making little snowballs with raisins inside of them. While they were doing that, staff member Elizabeth filled various containers and a new enrichment barrel with the newly fallen snow.

After cleaning, we brought the snowballs, containers and giant barrel inside and put them out in the Playroom (one of the chimps’ indoor enclosures). There were also large boxes full of paper as part of today’s “Lots of Paper” enrichment theme. We also put out lettuce as a forage item. Before giving the chimps access to the Playroom, we put bets on which of the items the chimps would go for first. Three out of the four of us here today voted that snowballs would be first, followed by the boxes of paper. Which one do you think the chimps went for first?

Jamie
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Well, we forgot to factor in the lettuce forage and that is what all of the chimps went for first, so we all lost the bet I guess. How did you do?

Jamie and Missy did peak into the barrel of snow, then the boxes of paper, but then went right back to foraging for lettuce.

Missy
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After all the lettuce was eaten, Jamie settled down to do some more thorough investigating of the boxes and barrel of snow.

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Much to my surprise, the snowballs were last!

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While Jamie was busy with the barrel and boxes, Jody sat on the bridge and ate snow from one of the containers.

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After all of the lettuce was finished, Annie, Burrito and Foxie stayed in the loft eating snow from containers but were out of sight and Negra relaxed under a blanket nest.

So much to be grateful for

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The past few weeks have been a wild rumpus of weather. Pouring rain, freezing rain, freezing fog, snow and ice. The chimpanzees have been troopers, and even boss lady Jamie has been handling the interruption in walks around Young’s Hill relatively well. But they relish every chance they get to stretch their bodies and minds in between the late autumn storms.

This week we’ve had a couple of beautifully bright, sunny mornings with warmer temperatures (meaning above freezing) and Jamie, Missy, Annie and Foxie, in particular, have been heading outside after breakfast to run, leap, climb and explore. J.B. and I both captured some of the happenings.

Missy (foreground) and Annie (background) both bipedal before they sprinted off through the bamboo in a game of chase.

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Annie (L) and Missy (R):

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I love Missy’s play face in this one:

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Foxie and France Dora pass by on their way to explore:

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Missy contemplates her next move:

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Foxie and her beloved new France Dora decide to take a climb and see what they can see:

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You can just see the river that runs below the sanctuary in the top left corner.

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Jamie has made sure we are making the most of every single walkable moment with the weather breaks. The forecast is predicting a snow storm beginning tonight and through tomorrow so maybe she knows there’s no time to waste.

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And with the holidays fast approaching, all is abuzz as we begin preparations for the chimps’ holiday celebration. Donations, gifts from our Wishlist for the chimps and humans alike, and holiday cards full of love and good wishes have been pouring in! And trolls! So many trolls for Foxie! We are constantly astounded by your generosity and are so full of gratitude to you all! And we would like to share a special thank you for long-time supporter, Diana Petri, for her amazingly generous gift of the new office computers Diana and I put on the Wishlist! Diana has been patching hers together for months and mine is an old PC that has been making crazy noises when it’s forced to wake up in the morning, so to say we are excited is an understatement.

But most importantly, each one of your gifts, whether for the chimpanzees, or to help the humans care for the chimpanzees, not only provides for their direct quality care, but allows us to focus more funds toward maintaining a secure future and beginning our exciting plans for expansion and growing our chimpanzee family. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to each and every one of you who have given your support, in whatever form that has come. Every single thought, dollar and gift makes an immense difference to the chimpanzees’ lives, both now and in the future.

And to get in the spirit of the season, I will leave you with this moment from today captured by Anna. Foxie, her new France Dora (out of sight, but who was being passed back and forth between us) and I sat down to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” this afternoon. The sweet Vince Guaraldi music is some of my favorite to listen to this time of year (not to mention seeing, and okay, yes, mimicking the Peanuts characters’ dancing scene) and as Foxie loves music and dancing I thought the show might be right up her alley. Sure enough, the second she heard the music she smiled and started head-bobbing along.

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Happiest of holiday seasons to all of you!

Snow ghost

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With the frigid temperatures remaining, but most of the snow gone by yesterday, we awoke to yet a few more inches of fresh snow this morning! For whatever reasons, the chimpanzees LOVE to eat snow (and icicles!) so we put out several buckets again, topped to the brim with the fresh, powdery stuff. As the snow eating forage went on we could see some of the chimps shiver occasionally, covering up in blankets, slapping the ground seemingly experiencing a bit of “brain-freeze” and yet still, they continued to shovel the snow treats in with gusto and excitement!

Jamie eventually gathered her buckets around and covered herself up completely with a sheet. At first, we couldn’t tell who it was under there:

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At one point, she finally laid down and playfully buried herself in her nest completely, occasionally popping her head out…

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…only to go back to eating more snow from her nest:

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Finally, Jamie had enough and like an apparition, she headed upstairs to the warmer loft completely covered in her sheet. You can just make out her bum and the heel of her boot under there:

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And then there’s Foxie. This girl was so cold she was shivering, but was too excited to stop eating the snow!

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The chimp house is kept at a toasty temperature and they have radiant floor heating, but all that snow eating would make anyone cold! We decided we needed to warm the chimpanzees up so we offered hot tea service for everyone afterward which was quite a hit. But isn’t that one of the best things about wintertime? Feeling the elements down to your bones and then getting to warm up with a cozy treat afterward?

While this might not always be considered to be the most ideal of locations for a chimpanzee sanctuary, the four seasons we have here bring so much to the chimpanzees lives for them to explore and experience. I would think after decades of darkness and deprivation, having such a variety for their senses and minds to experience would make life feel that much more…well, alive.

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An Enduring Love

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Over seven years after meeting and falling in love with her first troll doll, Foxie is still so intensely enamored with these strange little dolls that she carries one everywhere. Today she laid down to rest in the playroom and spent several minutes gazing at her doll before closing her eyes.

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