Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Mixing it up a bit

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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.
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Then she licked the bubbles,
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and then blew more bubbles,
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and even more bubbles.
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Foxie, who can usually be found with a troll or dora doll had one of Burrito’s favorite toys in her mouth.
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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.
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Jamie with her boots after the walk around Young’s Hill.
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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.

Missy Chimpanzee’s 39th Birthday

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Today was Missy-centered. The theme was tomatoes, slinky toys, tomatoes, socks, tomatoes, cattails, tomatoes, socks, and kongs with peanuts in them – all favs of Missy.

At our HOOT! gala in May, one of the more interesting items we auctioned off during the live auction was a photography session at the sanctuary with professional photographers Dean Rutz and Karen Ducey. There were two lucky winning bidders, and one of the winners cashed in their session this morning – we can’t wait to share a few of their photos with you!

In the meantime, here are some that the staff took today of the birthday girl, a flashback to one of my favorite videos of Missy, and a few photos of the other chimpanzees enjoying Missy’s birthday.

Missy spent the day, as usual, in action and elusive to the camera.

In the photo below, Missy is climbing one of the tallest structures on the hill during the breakfast forage, which included a lot of – you guessed it – tomatoes!

Missy climbing

 

Here she is at the top with a mouthful:

Missy behind post

 

Later, we handed out cattails. Missy decided to take hers inside:

MIssy biting cattail

 

Missy escaping the watchful eye of the camera, climbing to the bridge in the playroom to enjoy her cattail:

Missy climbing stairs

 

Missy in a nest playing with a slinky on the catwalk of the playroom:

Missy with a slinky

 

MIssy removing a kong from a sock:

Missy sit window kong sock

Missy sit window with kong

 

We put the kongs in socks for the nighttime enrichment in homage to Missy’s own invention, and one of my favorite videos of Missy, taken in 2010 (see below):

 

The other chimpanzees also had a great time with all of the birthday festivities today.

Jamie explored some new enrichment in the greenhouse:

Jamie with recorder

 

Jamie cleaning some plastic glasses with a sock:

Jamie with glasses

 

Negra foraged on the hill for breakfast:

Negra forage on the hill

Negra with a strawberry

Negra with chow

 

And Annie, proudly, got the tomato piñata during the playroom forage:

Annie with pinata

 

I posted a little video on Facebook of Missy playing what looks a lot like a thumb war with Negra while they lay next to each other on the catwalk. All in all, it was a pretty great 39th birthday for one of the most athletic, full-of-life chimpanzee people that I’ve ever met. We love you, Missy!

Missy's birthday portrait

Negra, troll dolls, and overcoming anxiety

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If you read J.B.’s blog post yesterday, you know that we’ve had quite an interesting development at the sanctuary. Negra, who normally ignores enrichment, has taken a shine to troll dolls, which up until now have been Foxie’s “thing.”

An unrelated fact that you may have noticed if you’ve been with us for a while is that Negra is not as often pictured participating in forages on Young’s Hill as the other chimpanzees. Sometimes Negra decides not to join the group on the hill for forages. We are not entirely sure why this is, and we are trying to figure it out right now (more on that later).

The new development today is that Negra took a troll doll with her to forage on the hill!

It certainly seems that Foxie is able to get comfort from her dolls that she carries everywhere – a kind of security blanket, and perhaps Negra is experiencing something similar with the dolls now.

This is a not-very-good photo of Negra, with the troll doll in her right hand as she is walking back to the greenhouse with a mouthful of lettuce:

Negra holding troll on young's hill

 

Here is Negra passing Foxie (her inspiration?). I like the way that chimpanzees, even when there is lots of room (like 2 acres), will go out of their way to have physical contact:

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I was excited to get this photo – you can see Negra’s hand around the troll and Foxie’s around a Dora as they walk in opposite directions:

hands holding dolls

 

One of the many things that I love about Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is that all staff caregivers meet twice a month to talk about the chimpanzees and raise concerns or even just share stories. One of our recent topics has been Negra’s reluctance to participate in forages. For a while, every time that Negra did not forage with the group, we would give her a meal in the greenhouse or inside the building. But then it seemed that she wasn’t even considering going onto the hill, perhaps because she knew she would get her own private picnic. She does sometimes show anxiety about going on the hill, and we don’t want to cause her to miss lunch if she is responding out of genuine fear.

However, we do want to encourage all of the chimps to experience everything that the sanctuary has to offer, to get exercise, and to work on overcoming situations that might cause a little bit of anxiety. So, a few weeks ago we decided to try not giving Negra a private meal if she didn’t at least make a move to participate in the forage. This may be providing her the encouragement that she needed to join the group in foraging.

Negra eating lettuce

At our last meeting we decided to start recording the different factors that may be influencing Negra to choose whether or not to participate in forages on the hill. But now we might just have to add one – whether or not she has a troll doll with her!

The train

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There is a train that goes along the river that is in the valley below the sanctuary. Negra often likes to watch the train go by at her window spot from the playroom—the train can be seen on the south side of the building and Young’s Hill. Jody however, was on the north end of the hill this morning when the train started to go by. We don’t always hear the horn blowing (because there aren’t any large train crossings near us) but you can sometimes hear a slight screech of the wheels against the tracks.

When Jody heard that this morning, she got a little spooked, and approached Jamie for some reassurance by reaching out and hugging her back. Jamie grunted (sorry, the photos don’t show that!) to sort of affirm, “yes, I heard that, too, and it’s okay.”

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Still somewhat spooked, Jody retreated toward the safety of the greenhouse.

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But before she could reach the building, she saw the train passing by, and I think she was comforted in seeing that the strange noise was really coming from something quite normal in their lives.

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Tomatoes from the Garden

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Included among the vegetables currently ripening in the chimpanzees’ garden (thanks to volunteer Denice), are many cherry tomatoes:

Tomatoe plant in garden

 

This has not escaped the notice of one Missy Chimpanzee. The chimpanzees have a great view of the garden from all of the windows of the playroom. While many of the windows are bullet-proof glass, we do have some that have window caging over them, which allows us to open the window on the other side of the window cage for air flow. It also allows the chimps to climb on the caging. Here is Missy clinging to the window caging, gazing at the tomato plants:

Missy hanging on window caging

 

Missy may be of the opinion that the windows open so that we can give her those tomatoes she has her eye on, and that’s fine with us – it’s fun and satisfying to be able to give the chimpanzees exactly what they are asking for. Today, volunteer caregiver Connie and staff member Debbie served Missy some tomatoes.

Connie giving Missy a tomato

 

Jamie joined in on the spontaneous treat:

Debbie serving Missy and Jamie tomatoes

 

I can not emphasize enough how much Missy loves tomatoes:

Debbie serve Missy tomatoMissy being served a tomato

Chimpanzee Nest Slumber Party

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A few days ago we discovered the remains of a slumber party in the loft of the playroom (see photo below):

slumber party nest

While it’s great to get photos of the chimpanzees doing things, it’s also fun to come across the evidence of their activities when we safely enter the area where they were.

The slumber party remains inspired me to take a look for some other nest photos, and below are a few favorites. But first a photo of Jody from a few weeks ago creating yet another nest masterpiece. I love the way Jody rolls the blankets to make a tight nest:

Jody nesting

 

Here’s another photo of some sort of slumber party action:

large nests together

 

This nest was found in Negra’s winter spot in the loft, so it might be hers, though it looks a bit neat for her style, so I’m going to guess it was a Missy construction. I like the unusually high sides:

nest in Negra's winter spot

 

What is happening here? Another multi-nest, or the start of a single enormous bed?

messy nest

 

I’m a fan of hay and straw incorporated into nests, like this day-nest found on top of the platform in the greenhouse:

nest with hay

 

and then there’s the nests that have toys and other favorite things included:

toyful nest

 

This one’s from just the other day. If you’re familiar with the chimps, I give you only one guess as to who made this bed:

boot nest

Negra’s lips

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One of my favorite blog posts is one that J.B. posted about the stages of Negra’s lips drooping. I think her heavy lips are one of her more endearing qualities, wouldn’t you agree?

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