Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Relaxation

by

I take a yoga class once a week and am often inspired by the chimps here at CSNW. Their lives are nowhere near the freedom of Africa, but they have mastered the art of being able to truly relax in their sanctuary. Negra, Annie, and Jody have all been spotted doing “yoga poses” while relaxing (see this post of Jody doing some of my personal favorite poses), but true relaxation involves much more than a stretch or a twist. Today, I went out to the outdoor area and spotted Negra kicking back on the deck. Her ability to let go with her expression is priceless! That is true relaxation.

Art

by

As you may know, Jamie is an artist, though her medium of choice these days is usually pens and crayons, rather than paint. Perhaps she is more of a writer than a painter?

One of my favorite pieces from Jamie is the mask in this post. I found it while cleaning the playroom and was immediately amazed at how artistic and creative it was, so we’ve decided to frame it and put it in this year’s auction! I can’t wait to see how well it does!

Birthday Coconuts

by

Missy’s birthday party was today. First, in the playroom, Jackie and I put almost entirely SOCKS out for the enrichment (we also included some boots and trolls, which are essential for enriching Jamie and Foxie). After we cleaned the outdoor area, we set up a huge forage of watermelon, lychees, bananas, bell peppers, green beans, and of course everyone’s favorite—coconuts! We also put out amazing gift bags put together by Robbi and Dick with all sorts of new enrichment. As we were setting up the forage, the chimps watched from the windows and were food grunting and squeaking.

Jackie took dozens of pictures of the chimps foraging through Missy’s birthday party, but sadly, the camera “decided” to re-format the card! So we lost all the pictures. Luckily when we realized this, the chimps had brought their coconuts into the playroom, and I was able to get a few photos of that.

Here’s Missy opening her coconut (notice she’s holding it steady with her foot!)

Foxie:

Burrito:

Burrito had an interesting method of trying to open his coconut. First, he was dragging it across the ground, and started rolling it back and forth. When that didn’t work he tried tossing it around and around:

He still hasn’t gotten it open but he is keeping it close to him. Hopefully he’ll get it open at some point!

I didn’t get a picture of Jody with a coconut, but here she is enjoying some leeks from our garden at the end of the party forage.

Happy Birthday, Missy!

Jackie and Diana are going to be goofy in Missy’s honor in about 10 minutes, and I’m sure it will be quite the sight to see. I’ll be photographing the event, and hopefully we’ll get some good shots posted tomorrow. Thank you to everyone that has pledged or donated to today’s Missy Games!

Another use for butcher paper

by

Butcher paper is not just for arts and crafts. Jamie and Jody find it very nest-worthy. They both had nests that resembled paper mountains!

 

As I shifted the chimpanzees from the front rooms to the playroom, Jody grabbed this heaping pile of paper to use for later in the day.

Frozen treats for a hot day

by

I know I’ve said it before- we have some pretty amazing volunteers here at CSNW. Volunteers Katelyn and Stephanie came up with the idea to freeze juice, blueberries, and raspberries in water bottles for an afternoon forage and today was the perfect day for it. It’s been several hours since we put them out, and the chimps are still looking for bottles. Thanks for keeping everyone enriched- and cool- ladies!

Troll hair

by

Foxie’s trolls often end up “scalped” and lose their hair. It seems like both Jamie and Jody might do the troll-scalping, although we don’t always catch it happening. One afternoon Jackie and I witnessed Jody rip this troll’s hair out while casually resting on top of the wooden platform outside.

We have some troll dolls that are quite odd in my opinion—they don’t really resemble the traditional troll doll and have a different type of hair. For some reason these trolls don’t lose their hair as often, if ever. In this troll line-up, you can see a traditional troll still with its hair, one that’s been scalped, and two of the “odd” trolls still with hair.

Foxie still interacts with these ones…

and maybe she’s on a mission to begin their hair removal too?