Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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The wonderfulness of Mave

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Mave can be hot or cold when it comes to playing with the humans. Of course as much as we love to play with the chimps, we love it most when they play with one another as their relationships are the most important to their well-being. But when Mave does choose to play with the humans, like most of us, she has people she seems to prefer (of which I am not usually one), but she’s dignified you know, so at least with me she doesn’t usually let on that she’s really invested in whatever game we might be playing. 😉 But yesterday she bestowed me with a sudden game of chase.

Now Mave also has a very endearing one-size-fits-all habit when she’s excited about something. It might be in greeting Willy B, displaying, or just having fun and playing, but she will repeatedly leap up and down on all fours and kick her legs straight down when she’s in the air. Even when she’s being serious, it’s pretty cute. So as we were playing, she would run to the windows to get me to run outside and chase her from the other side of the windows and when I’d run back inside I could see her shadow going boingity, boing, boing boing, in anticipation of me running back inside, but the second I’d turn the corner to see her she’d just be sitting there as though nothing were going on.

Despite doing her best to pretend she didn’t have the time of day for my shenanigans, at one point she could no longer contain herself and went flying through the front rooms, grabbing a slinky on the way, and just flailed about in a blur of joy:

As a side note, we’ve been marveling at how dark Mave’s face has become after all the sunbathing she’s been doing in the chute lately. Here’s a pre-summertime Mave portrait that J.B. took:

In other news, the original playroom for the seven is getting a facelift and as the humans work over the next few days to update things, the chimpanzees will be spending more time in the other areas of their home (Young’s Hill, the greenhouse and the front rooms). Routine is important for captive chimpanzees, particularly those who have been in biomedical research, so when we have no alternative but to disrupt the norm a bit, we try to think of extra enrichment and exciting things for them to enjoy to help distract them from the temporary changes in their day.

Today began with a breakfast forage on Young’s Hill and as the afternoon warmed up, we served ice cubes (I have no idea why they love these simple things so much, but they sure do) and buckets of Gatorade. Burrito felt the best approach was to just lie next to the buckets and go for the triple straw method:

Foxie joined in:

Raspberry Days

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There are many reasons to love summers in the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorites is something that the chimpanzees also enjoy: an abundance of native berries to snack on.

The raspberry bushes that flank the Chimp House are not new. They were planted many moons ago and have been maintained by dedicated staff and volunteers in the years since. Each summer, the chimps (and humans) seem to get more excited about them. It’s justified, because they’re the most delicious raspberries that I have ever had the privilege of tasting. I’d bet that the chimpanzees feel the same way.

Today, Jamie was especially insistent that humans should be harvesting raspberries and giving her the bounty. If you’re curious how Jamie communicates her demands, I recommend looking at Anna’s post from last summer. Today, Level III volunteer Lisa filled a stainless bowl with the prized berries and then served a handful to the chimps, including the moderately-patient Jamie. They were all thrilled, and we had plenty left over to make raspberry smoothies tomorrow morning. As Diana wrote a few years ago, we make sure that the chimpanzees are provisioned with healthy, unprocessed, species-appropriate foods like fruit, greens and legumes. As we grow larger and need to buy most of our produce in bulk for the chimps, it’s nice to know that there are seasonal treats nearby that the chimps can enjoy for nutrition and novelty.

Lisa, following our health and hygiene protocols, sported gloves, scrubs, and a mask while handling food and enrichment today. All personnel who work around the chimps have to do so with the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) in order to prevent the exchange of viral pathogens between us and them. With COVID-19 potentially affecting captive and free-ranging apes, we have elevated our standard hygiene practices and dramatically reduced the amount of personnel present at the sanctuary each day. Normally, the raspberry patch would be a flurry of activity throughout the day as chatty groups of volunteers and interns lazily harvest in the sunshine. Because of our restrictions, however, we must find other ways to complete all the essential tasks with just a handful of personnel.

One permanently-essential task, of course, is play. This afternoon, after Lisa finished handing out fresh raspberries to all the chimps, Foxie coyly suggested that they should vigorously chase each other down the hallway. Foxie kept running from the Playroom into the front rooms and back again, pausing only to pass Lisa a doll, do a twirl, and zoom away again. Foxie, of course, relished a raspberry all the while.

The chimps don’t seem to have any sympathy for us caregivers who have to sprint around the building wearing cloth masks, scrubs and heavy boots, but it’s okay. I don’t think any of us mind breaking from our chores to pick raspberries and hang out with playful chimps.

Portraits of the Day

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Anna and I are wrapping things up in the Chimp House and reflecting on what a long day it has been. Sadly, my initial plans for composing a video to attach to today’s blog deteriorated as the day went on. Instead, you’re all getting these portraits of three of my favorite chimps. (Note: I have many, many “favorite” chimps.)

First, Willy B wanted to look into the camera lens and then see the resulting images.

Then, Honey B sat in the same spot while she was eating lunch. She grasped a roll of craft paper, one of her favorite enrichment materials, in her right hand while she nibbled on carrots with her left.

Jamie, per usual, did laps around the Hill during the morning and afternoon. As always, she was vigilant and perceptive.

We hope everyone is staying safe (and staying sane). Don’t forget to wear a mask!

The Mystery of the Disappearing Jersey Cows

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It was a chilly morning, smothered by gray clouds and filled with incessant wind.

The chimps did not seem excited when I opened the gateway to Young’s Hill, and they sneered as the wind lashed their faces and caused the prairie grasses to whip around them. Soon, they had all retreated back to the warm security of the Greenhouse. Inside, they used blankets and other enrichment items to make elaborate nests.

Jamie
Annie
Jody
Negra

All seemed to be subdued by the weather. The exception, of course, was Burrito. As Diana demonstrated in yesterday’s blog and video, Bubba’s appetite for play has been insatiable. This morning, he stomped around the Playroom and Greenhouse while clutching a decapitated doll.

The clouds eventually dissipated and the landscape began to feel warmer around midday. As we normally do on Sunday afternoons, I stayed in the building to write the blog while Chad hopped on the Gator and took care of the cattle. When he came back to the Chimp House about thirty minutes later, he appeared frazzled. Although I was hesitant to ask, I inquired “How are the cows today?”

Chad caught his breath and recounted his tale. Apparently, after mucking the barn and refilling the water troughs, he had trouble locating the cattle to give them their daily fly treatment. He drove all over the property with the Gator, growing more frantic with each empty pasture, until he was on the verge of sending a radio transmission for backup. He began to fear that the cattle had escaped (which wouldn’t be the first time one of us had that thought).

Just as he was about to call Katelyn and I to join him in the search for four missing Jerseys, he saw movement down in the wetlands. Sure enough, hidden in the thick vegetation that grows along a seasonal creek bed between the pastures, Chad found Betsy, Honey, Meredith and Nutmeg. The cattle had not escaped, but they were remarkably camouflaged.

I found this story amusing, but was also obviously relieved to know that the cattle were safe. A few minutes later, I grabbed the sanctuary’s camera and trudged up the hill to take some photographs of the intrepid bovines. Honey had climbed out of the ravine and appeared to be on high alert as she watched me approach. (Honey is the ultimate skeptic.) Betsy and Meredith were grazing together in the shady areas beneath the Ponderosa pines, and Nutmeg was still browsing in the muddy creek.

Going into the vegetation to forage is nothing new (e.g., J.B.’s photo of Nutmeg from Friday), but we’re still constantly amazed by how wild the cattle have become despite their commercialized past.

Honey
Honey
Betsy and Meredith
Honey
Meredith and Betsy
Nutmeg (down in the creek)
One of the ponds (located below the creek)

Burrito will play with you now

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If you are not already a big fan of Burrito, you should be after watching today’s video. Seriously, he has been non-stop playful lately. He’s definitely a bright light during these difficult times!

4,392 Days of Summer

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I used to live my life for the summers.

Growing up in a maritime New England town, summer was always the “best” season. The warm weather and sandy coastline brought tourists from all over, and my teenage friends and I spent those months playing baseball, mowing lawns, and bringing Dunkin iced coffees to our favorite beaches. Even though I moved to a big city and academics took over, I still wanted to live my life in a permanent state of summer vacation and I developed this dream of expatriating to the tropics and staying there. As a naive young biologist, my plan was to track wild primates through jungles all morning and end each day with a bottle of rum in a hammock overlooking some turquoise lagoon. (Don’t ask me how I planned to fund that kind of lifestyle.)

In an unexpected turn of events, I now reside in an arid place far from the ocean where the summers are short, windy and dry. I’ve grown to respect the other seasons and, for some reason, I can now see the beauty in even the most frigid, gloomy, foggy, damp, and dusty landscapes. The Pacific Northwest is a natural marvel; it’s truly a wonder that the snow-capped Cascades can exist so close to the mossy forests of the Olympic coast, the dusty shrub-steppe of the Columbia plateau, and the wind-blown grasslands of the Palouse. Out here, there’s no such thing as perfect weather; there is just weather, and you better have the right gear for it.

Now, the central region of Washington state is transitioning from a cool and wet spring into a dry and hazy summer. Yesterday was the official solstice, but we have had golden sunlight well into the evenings for the whole month of June. The cattle are grazing heartily on the prairie grasses and make daily pilgrimages back to their watering hole before finding some afternoon shade below the pines. Jamie and the gang have been taking advantage of the extra daylight to go on more group patrols out in their grassy enclosure, and Willy B and his friends have been napping in the Courtyard and sunbathing in the outdoor chute.

I sometimes wonder if, in some abstract way, the summer months have a similar effect on the chimpanzees as they had on adolescent me. As I watch them chase each other around the Hill, harvest wild greens, sunbathe in the Greenhouse and slurp down chunks of avocado and watermelon, it’s easy to forget just how much the chimps also enjoy crunching on icicles, taking in the crisp fall breeze and napping on rainy days. Like true residents of the Pacific Northwest, they can make the most of any season and aren’t deterred by a little precipitation. Although they may not have the same sentimental attachment to summer that I once had, I hope that their entire sanctuary experience gives them a similar sense of freedom, with their only objective being to do whatever they feel like doing within the confines of their sheltered home. Since they’ve just celebrated the twelfth anniversary of their retirement to sanctuary, they have now had 4,392 consecutive days of vacation. That’s a whole lot o’ summer.

Of course, there are those who generally prefer the comforts of the indoors and the word “vacation” just means that they don’t need to get out of bed. To these individuals, the seasonal changes really don’t seem to matter too much and just seem to flow around them. The chief of these stoic couch-potatoes is Negra. “The Queen” will occasionally venture out to participate in an outdoor forage, but she generally has the same low-key itinerary each day, rain or shine. Today, she napped in the Greenhouse under a pile of fleece blankets while the other chimps engaged in summer fun out on the Hill. Happy four-thousand, three-hundred and ninety-second day of summer break, Neggie.