Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
I can’t believe it’s already almost half-way through February! That means Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and we have a super spiffy card you can send to your special someone. Just make a donation in honor of your Valentine before noon tomorrow and they’ll get a nice “It’s Good to Be Loved” card. (Check out this morning’s newsletter for more info).
Here’s some pictures of the chimps enjoying a pomegranate forage the other day:
Negra:
Foxie:
Annie:
Burrito often bites on something when he’s feeling playful. Here he’s doing his best to charm me into playing with him while I’m trying to take photos.
Pamela Miller sponsored today for her sister Linda. Pam says that Linda has a newfound interest in animal welfare, and we can’t think of any better ambassadors for the cause than the Cle Elum Seven. Welcome aboard, Linda!
Normally after cleaning the playroom, we put out a small forage of nuts, seeds, dried fruit or some combination before letting the chimps back in there. They most certainly know our routine so as we start to wrap things up in there, the chimps start checking in with us to see what the forage is going to be. They watch us scatter what ever it is and (depending on how exciting it is) they begin to food grunt (and hopefully food squeak) in anticipation. Today, no one was around as we scattered the forage – not even Burrito, who is always interested to see what the forage will be! We locked everything up and I opened the door for the chimps – nothing.
But as it turns out, the absence of chimps wasn’t because they just weren’t hungry or interested in the forage – it’s because all seven chimps were out on Young’s Hill! No one had even seemed to notice that I had opened the playroom back up for them. I walked outside to see what they were up to and Burrito and Jody were roaming the very top of the hill, Annie and Missy were wrestling on the shaky bridge, Jamie was walking around in the bamboo with a boot, Foxie was on top of one of the climbing structures playing with a pink-haired troll doll, and Negra was simply sitting by the log structure.
With it being as cold as it has been, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Negra just “hanging out” out there. She’s gone out a few times since the snow melted but not for very long. This morning, it was warm and sunny enough that she just sat down and took in some fresh air.
As J.B. mentioned the other day, we often can’t get photos of Negra on the hill because she “doesn’t deal with the paparazzi” as well as the others, but today, for what ever reason, she didn’t seem to mind one bit. She sat there for a good 15 minutes with me snapping photos. I guess all that fresh air and sunshine made dealing with “obnoxious” photographers trying to get a glimpse of the Queen worth it.
Looking down the driveway:
Today’s enrichment theme was “pre-made nests”, meaning the caregivers built nests based on the things each of the chimps typically incorporate into their nests, including the items in the nest, types of blankets, blanket placement and nest location. It was a lot of fun to set up! While the chimps love to build their own nests, it’s fun to mix things up a little bit every once in a while and do something kooky. All of the chimps went to their “correct” nest, which was very satisfying to us goofy humans! I would love to give you all the details, but we thought it might be fun to see how well YOU know the chimps instead. Can you guess who’s nest is who’s? While some are trickier to guess than others, there is a solid hint in each photo.
At CSNW, we follow the philosophy that the chimpanzees are in captivity not by choice, and we see it as our duty to let them live their lives out in the best possible way. Essentially, we see ourselves as servants. We clean their enclosures, we serve them their meals, and we play games that cater to what they like best. For instance, I heard Sarah had a box with trolls in it on her head the other day. Anything to make Foxie laugh! And last week, I heard that JB wore some cowgirl boots for Jamie.
On Monday I posted a photo of Jackie serving dinner to the chimps on our Facebook page. It made me realize that we don’t really post about their normal food service—when we post about food it is typically because of a big fun forage. Forages are more similar to how chimps would find food if they were in Africa, but we don’t do a forage for every meal mainly because we want to make sure everyone is getting enough food. Since they aren’t in the wild and aren’t able to continually forage, they depend completely on us to make sure they get their yummy fruits and veggies. Sometimes we make a prepared cooked dish, like oatmeal, rice, or pancakes. They love prepared meals but they are perfectly happy with just fresh produce which is the healthiest option anyway, so that is usually what they get.
For breakfast, we serve a fruit smoothie with ingredients that change daily but always include protein powder. We cut up a couple different fruits and also have a bowl full of nuts as an appetizer. They also get multi-vitamins, probiotics, and fiber at breakfast. Lunch is fresh veggies—usually about 3 or 4 veggies each. Dinner is either a prepared meal accompanied by a fruit and/or veggie, or more often just fresh produce. I like to do a mix of fruit and veggies at dinner, but it doesn’t really matter too much. We cut all the produce into pieces that fit nicely through the caging, and the chimps usually take the pieces to their hands or straight to their mouth. Smoothie and other drinks are served by pouring from a cup straight to their mouth. (This video shows a little bit of the breakfast routine.)
Below are some pictures of dinner tonight.
Negra getting pear to her mouth:
Annie getting pear to her hand:
Jamie getting orange to her mouth:
Missy getting onion to her hand:
Jamie getting banana to her mouth (and Missy enjoying hers in the background):
Foxie getting onion to her mouth:
Today is Meg Lunnum’s birthday and her last day of work before retirement, and she has sponsored the day to celebrate. What a cause for celebration! Meg supports Negra through the Chimpanzee Pal program. We’ll make sure Negra gets lots of peanuts and lettuce (her favorites!) today in your honor, Meg.
Happy birthday and congratulations!
