Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Building Patience one Tomato at a Time

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If you did not already know this about Missy, she LOVES tomatoes. Currently in our garden we have tomatoes and cherry tomatoes growing. The garden is a type of enrichment for the chimps. It is fun to have the excitement build while they wait for some of their favorite foods to grow! This morning Jamie and Missy reminded Caregiver Katelyn and I that they were out there! Missy stuck around a little longer to see if they were ripe yet. Unfortunately, they are not ready to be consumed. But… I did fine tomatoes in the fridge, which everyone got to enjoy for lunch!

Missy looking out into the garden:

Missy

Missy staring back, waiting for us to find the ripened ones:

Missy continuing to look for tomatoes:

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Charming, then wild, then back to charming again

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Burrito is a chimpanzee that’s packed with charisma and charm. He’s a guy that’s easy to get to know and love, whether you’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting him in person or not. He is equal parts playful friend and boisterous fight instigator. Not even five minutes after these photos were taken of him relaxing casually, he was pushing a table across the playroom causing the girls to scatter in his wake, and five minutes after his display he was playing tug-o-war with a caregiver. Creating chaos is part of daily life for a male chimpanzee and Burrito is not immune to such urges.

Impossible to imagine right?

To each their own

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If you’ve been following the blog for long you’re aware that we often write about providing enrichment for the chimpanzees as a way to help alleviate boredom and bring interest and fun to their days. A lot of the enrichment is provided by us humans in the form of things like toys, food puzzles, parties, and wild browse we collect. And a lot of the enrichment the chimps provide themselves such as harvesting wild greens from Young’s Hill. Staff and volunteers alike spent countless hours trying to think of new and exciting things and we keep enrichment calendars so that we’re inspired to think outside the box and mix things up. And inspiration often simply comes from the area we live in and the distinct four seasons we have.

Being summer, it’s fun to offer the chimps extra ways to stay hydrated and cool. So today we placed the ever-popular ice water buckets and a table of ice in the chimps’ playroom. We also made a very shallow pool in the chimps’ sandbox in the greenhouse and filled it with cups for them to help themselves to throughout the day. For all the effort we put into making things new and exciting, sometimes it’s the simplest things that get the chimps excited. There was so much hooting going on over ice!

Annie found a big ice chunk and quickly made her way to the greenhouse where she made a nest to enjoy it from (you can notice the ice chunk just outside her nest):

Enter Missy. Missy LOVES ice and being the more dominant of the two chimps, Annie decided not to eat the ice with Missy hanging around. Missy was very aware of this and kept taking passes looking at the ice, but she didn’t take it from Annie. So the ice melted away as the standoff continued. But this didn’t keep Annie from relaxing and enjoying her time. That leg!!

I never did see where the ice wound up, but either way Annie seemed utterly content.

And then there’s Jamie. Two summers ago we noticed for the first time that somehow (and much to our surprise) she and Missy had discovered wasp larvae to be an exceptional delicacy. This is pretty intriguing for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is Jamie loves them and finds the risks in harvesting them worth the reward.

Yesterday she and Missy came running in from the hill with a small nest and Jamie was screaming and alarm calling all the way with all the other chimps in pursuit to see what was wrong with their friend. As far as we could tell, Jamie appeared to have been stung on the foot. She fell into her nest (still clutching her valuable wasp nest tightly), screaming, alarm calling and looking at her foot. But within mere seconds she was up and walking around the playroom continuing to alarm call in between taking bites of her treat. All the chimps continued to follow her being interested in 1) what the apparent threat was that Jamie kept alarm calling about and if she was okay and 2) what she was eating. But Jamie quickly settled down and with six chimps gathered around her food peering (staring intently because they were hoping she’d share) she enjoyed her treat. And she did not share. It was all pretty dramatic.

So today while cleaning the greenhouse I had to remove a couple starter wasp nests for the chimps’ and humans’ safety. Jamie was watching intently and so we decided to hide this apparent (wasp free) delicacy with the rest of the forage. She immediately scooped it up and began food grunting. Missy is the only person I’ve seen show an interest in wasp larvae and she quickly followed Jamie doing her best food peer and polite requests, but Jamie was unmoved by Missy’s plea. (Missy did get a smaller bite of one later though).

Mmmhhh…wasp larvae.

Missy the Gymnast

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Today is all about Missy.  Missy is known for her acrobatic skills and living life to the very fullest!  For lunch we had a forage on Young’s Hill.  Missy found a hot route by walking on the fire hose and then flipping off to get some corn and sweet potatoes.

Missy walking on the fire hose:

Missy flipping off the hose:

And Missy sticks the landing!

After, Missy got a good stash and started heading in:

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Highly prized

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There are a few foods that a lot of caregivers mildly dread serving to the chimpanzees. One of these foods is corn on the cob. Corn is a hot commodity for the chimps and with its distinguished deliciousness, comes a wave of competitive desire from a few of the dominant individuals (namely Jamie and Jody) to try and steal as many pieces of corn as possible from the other chimps. This as you might imagine, is not seen as a popular tactic and can cause chaos and screams to ring through the sanctuary. We rarely serve whole pieces of corn any more because it causes so much drama, and instead will break the cobs in half, or cut them into many tiny pieces for play room forages. Today however, we decided to spread whole corn far and wide out on Young’s Hill. There is something about having all that extra space for foraging out on the hill that the chimps seem genuinely satisfied and lose a little bit of that competitive tension.

Of course there are some chimps that are a bit more successful…
Jody:

Negra seemed so pleased with her one large corn that she headed right back inside with it to enjoy:

Burrito needed a lot of reassurance from Foxie because he was so thrilled (note how “fluffy” he looks with his hair standing on end). Foxie was perfectly happy to pick up a bunch of primate chow that we also scattered with the corn.

Jamie and Missy were moving and eating quickly, but I promise they got lots of lunch too!

Annie ate all of her corn while she was outside: