Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimp enrichment

Some good news + cute Foxie

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If you aren’t subscribed to the Take Action newsletter through Eyes on Apes, you may not have seen yet that we’ve had a victory! Two days ago I sent out an action alert regarding a Great Clips commercial with a chimpanzee, and just a day later Great Clips made a statement to pledge not to use apes in future advertising, and said they were working on pulling the ad. This is all thanks to letters from you guys, so congrats! Please forward this victory on to friends and get them to join you in speaking up for apes in need.

As if that good news wasn’t enough happiness for the day, I thought I’d share some pictures of Foxie eating some snow with juice added to it. She’s pretty cute. I think she can put a smile on anyone’s face.

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Icicles

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The chimpanzees really love snow, which is great because it just keeps falling and they never get sick of it! Check out the newsletter that was sent out today that also includes a video of the chimps enjoying snow.

Anyway, with snow comes icicles. Today J.B. noticed that there were quite a few on the building, and the sun is out now so they are melting fast.

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I knocked down a few and passed them out to the chimps, but found that it was pretty tricky to pass them out AND get photos before either the chimps ran off to a hard-to-see spot with their icicle, or the icicles melted. My solution: I placed some icicles delicately on the caging so the chimpanzees would have to pull them through on their own. Missy was the first to come over, and she grabbed most of them before they melted. The other chimps were happily munching away on the ones I passed out earlier.

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I know you can’t see her whole face in the picture below, but I just love how you can see her drooped lip, which means she’s relaxed and happy.

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Playing it cool

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A couple of weeks ago, Diana wrote a blog post about Jamie’s complex personality – sometimes bossy, sometimes playful, sometimes (well, usually) mischievous, but always cool. For example, she probably has the coolest head nod of any chimp I’ve ever met. In terms of chimpanzee behaviors, a head nod means pretty much exactly what it sounds like – approval. Jamie’s head nod is often almost like a chin tip you’d see between bros, almost like what you would do if you were to say, ‘sup. But that’s not all that surprising, because Jamie is pretty much cool at everything she does. I would expect no less from the boss.

Here’s another example of Jamie “playing it cool”. The other day I spotted her in a comfy nest, surrounded by boots and troll dolls – classic CSNW.

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Then, she noticed a Dora the Explorer doll nearby and very slowly, very casually pulled it over to her nest.

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She seemed pretty happy to have Dora with her, but certainly didn’t want anyone to know she purposely pulled a doll into her nest. In her eyes, it would be way cooler if it just “happened” to be there.

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Troll games

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I took the camera out to the greenhouse this morning and found Foxie chilling out on a tire. After a minute or two she ran over, passed me her troll doll, and ran back to the tire. Pass-the-troll is a favorite game of Foxie’s. She tosses a doll through the caging to a caregiver and watches closely to see what the caregiver will do with it – the more ridiculous, the better. In this photo she’s watching me balance the troll on my head while trying to handle the camera.

Eventually, she’ll let us know she’s ready to have her troll back by holding out her hand for it. Once the troll has been returned to her, she often inspects it closely as if looking for signs of damage. Foxie knows that her dolls aren’t alive, and she often treats them as the inanimate objects they are, but she can also be very nurturing toward them. It seems that the mothering instinct that she didn’t have an opportunity to express toward her own babies in the lab has finally found an outlet.  Sometimes it even appears that Foxie likes to put her dolls in “dangerous” situations — entrusting them to a caregiver, or pushing them off a beam of a climbing structure — so that she can then “save” them.

Cute Burrito

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The other day I caught Burrito sitting by himself in the greenhouse with a pasta spoon in his mouth. He was just casually hanging out, minding his own business, and I snapped this photo:

Then he caught me taking pictures, and started being ridiculously cute:

Negra loves pumpkin

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Yesterday was volunteer Katelyn’s birthday and she decided to dedicate her day to spending time with the chimps. Being the amazing person that she is, she, instead of throwing a party for herself, threw a party for her seven chimp friends. She decided to pick up some mini pumpkins and fill them with all kinds of delicious fruits and veggies. They looked amazing!

We scattered the pumpkins both in the greenhouse and on Young’s Hill. Negra has learned a funny little trick when we do that – while everyone else is busy foraging on the hill, she collects all that she can in the greenhouse and basically gets her own forage. While she did go out on the hill a few times, she made the best profit with what was in the comfy greenhouse. But even the greenhouse was a little too chilly for Negra. She went around collecting as many as she could and made a stash in the front rooms. She would carry the pumpkin bowls in her mouth into the room, carefully set it down on the bench, and then head out for another. Smart lady!

Here she is in the front rooms with what is left of her stash:

After things settled down a bit, she was spotted sitting next to an empty pumpkin bowl, rubbing her tummy a bit, and then picking it up and diving in for more. She loves her pumpkin! Thanks so much, Katelyn!

Sleeping Jody

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Since her injury, it’s been all about Jody on the blog this last week. We like to mix things up for you as much as possible, but I snapped a few photos of her in and out of sleep in the front rooms this morning and I couldn’t resist sharing them. She has one of the prettiest faces I’ve ever seen.