Joan O’Flaherty sponsored today in memory of her parents, Ned and Noreen O’Flaherty. Today was their birthday (same day, two years apart). Ned and Noreen also shared a love for animals and a great concern for environmental and conservation issues, and Joan is certain they would have loved the work of CSNW. Thank you, Joan, for such a thoughtful gift.
Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Snowy snack
We got a few inches of fresh snow overnight, and despite the grumbling from the humans at the sanctuary (we’re ready for spring!), the chimpanzees were happy for a frosty snack. Here are a few photos that Jackie snapped this morning.
Burrito:
Missy hauled a big container of snow all the way upstairs:
Jamie and her ukulele
The chimps usually are not too interested in music (or any noise-making things in general) but today Jamie was really interested in playing this toy ukulele. She carried it around for most of the afternoon! She kept looking at it very up close, and my assumption is that she was trying to figure out how the noise was coming from the hole in the ukulele.
Annie the Acrobat
Mixed Media Art
Jamie likes to draw with pens and occasionally with crayons, but she’s not much of an artist with paint. She used to paint a lot when she first arrived at the sanctuary (we have some of her earlier pieces for sale in our store), but lately her focus has been more on eating the paint than actually creating something with it. However, volunteer Seana gave her some finger paint yesterday and she created quite the masterpieces!
Projects
Jamie loves a project- pretty much any kind of project. It could be as simple as filing her nails, or stuffing a straw inside of another straw, or as complex as attempting to tear apart the building– she always has something going on. She’s often engaged in projects that are far from natural chimpanzee behavior, but as Diana mentioned in her post last week, captivity isn’t natural, and given her history, it’s not all that surprising that her interests are very human-oriented. Chimpanzees are smart, and they often mimic behavior to reach their desired end result, but Jamie is no doubt a step above the rest.
After seeing J.B.’s recent post about Jamie “sewing”, supporter Wanda Trotta found these great sewing cards for her. I took it out to demonstrate before giving them to her and she was definitely interested, as you’ll see below.
Goldilocks and the three bamboo stalks
The other day Missy tried to climb the bamboo on Young’s Hill, but she couldn’t make it very far before it slowly gave way to her body weight. Today she went around to try and find a sturdier stalk, and it reminded me of the story of Goldilocks and the three bears: