Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
When Jamie gets a new pair of boots, she likes to have a caregiver model them first. Here’s Debbie showing off new boots from Lisa Stuverud yesterday. (Jamie didn’t seem to mind that the boots were too small for Debbie.)
Then Jamie usually demands that the caregiver modeling the boots accompany her on a walk around Young’s Hill. When that’s done, Jamie’s ready for us to give her the boots. She spends some time inspecting them closely. Yesterday she even licked them.
What’s one way to make seven chimpanzees awfully happy? Throw a spontaneous party. Supporter Lisa Stuverud sent us a box of decorations and enrichment for a cowboy party (and of course we already had dozens of cowboy boots thanks to Jamie’s obsession), so we had everything we needed for a good time.
Jamie was the first into the greenhouse, and she was throwing back her first drink before most of the others even made it out the door.
She checked high and low for hidden treats. Here she’s getting ready to use a fire hose to swing up into one of the windowsills where we often hide food:
Foxie sampling the pomegranate juice:
Annie:
Negra went through several of these boot bags filled with shredded paper searching for sunflower seeds.
Jody:
Missy:
Burrito’s strategy was simple: to find as many pieces of chow as one man could hold.
Thanks, Lisa, for making the chimps’ day!
Foxie and Annie both have a habit of getting mouthfuls of water and holding it for awhile. Annie sometimes uses the water later to wash her face, and Foxie tends to just take her time to slurp. Today they happened to both have mouthfuls of water, while in the playroom, and while looking at each other. They look like they’re having some kind of stand off.
Then Annie started to groom Foxie (they still had their mouths full) briefly.
And Foxie looked through some enrichment, testing out the trolls that were in front of her.
Many folks have come to know the chimpanzees and their special interests. For instance, Foxie and her love of troll and dora dolls, Jamie and her love of boots and Negra and her love of nesting with a lot of blankets. Well, today, the chimpanzees decided to mix things up a bit.
Annie is usually shy in front of the camera, but not today. Here she is blowing bubbles.
Then she licked the bubbles,
and then blew more bubbles,
and even more bubbles.
Foxie, who can usually be found with a troll or dora doll had one of Burrito’s favorite toys in her mouth.
Jamie usually lets us know when we pick out the right boot she wants us to wear for walking around Young’s Hill. Today she did not seem content with just one boot. After I showed her each boot in her boot bin, she continued to stomp on the second story of the playroom floor and motion toward her bin of boots. Turns out she wanted two boots not just one!
The boots on my feet during a walk around Young’s Hill with Jamie.
Jamie with her boots after the walk around Young’s Hill.
And finally, while cleaning the Playroom, we discovered an unusually large nest of blankets in Negra’s favorite nesting spot. Thinking that it was a little bit on the large side, we decided to count the number of blankets and found that she had made her nest with 31 blankets!! Throughout the course of a day, we place a total of 60 blankets in the Playroom, Greenhouse and Front Rooms, so a 31 blanket nest is quite large and probably quite comfortable. I wonder how many blankets she will use to build tonight’s nest. Unfortunately, I did not think to take a photo, but thought I would share that with you.
Each day we put out a variety of enrichment for the chimpanzees to play with. This is usually some assortment of toys, socks, scarves, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, scrub brushes, buckets, paper, stuffed animals, and anything else we think the chimps might enjoy. There are two types of items that we absolutely must include with each day’s enrichment: boots for Jamie and dolls for Foxie.
This morning Foxie spent a few minutes in front of a pile of dolls in the playroom, choosing which one(s) she should carry around for the day.
Foxie frequently uses the bite test to assess a doll’s worthiness:
In the end, she chose all three dolls, and the four of them headed into the greenhouse for some rest.
Even though the chimpanzees enjoyed a fabulous day long celebration last Friday for Foxie’s birthday, they’re not done partying just yet. Life in the sanctuary today was sponsored in honor of supporter Erin Yuhas’ birthday. Erin also donated some fun enrichment items and decorations for today’s affair. Thank you, again, Erin for your generous gift! The chimpanzees seemed to thoroughly enjoy their breakfast forage in the greenhouse this morning.
Jamie was quite content to forage her breakfast:
And to relax in the cool playroom after a successful party:
Annie and Foxie took particular advantage of the chow forage included in breakfast. Here is Annie:
And Foxie:
Foxie also continues to enjoy the new troll dolls she has recently received:
Burrito tried to carry as much food as he could all at once:
Missy found one good spot and stuck pretty close to it:
While Jody was a woman about town this morning. She enjoyed the forage from the top of the greenhouse to platforms below and afterwards relaxed with a good book.
Negra, who has just recently started showing an interest in enrichment items, took a definite shine to the donated stuffed monkey in these pictures. She carried it around with her for most of the day, bringing it to meals and napping with it in between.
Kicking back has never looked so cool.
