Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimpanzee

The endless salad bowl

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One of the best things about the hill lately has been the fact that it’s an endless salad bowl of grass. Everyone has a favorite “harvest” spot, but lots of folks are discovering that Missy’s Mound has the best grass. Today I drove the gator around the hill and caught Missy getting some grass from there. As soon as she saw me, she grabbed a huge handful of grass and playfully ran inside. Once I parked the gator and walked in, I found Missy standing in the playroom with her mouthful of grass, and she playfully ran back out to the hill to get me to chase her.


Team Dora or Team Troll?

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Foxie’s new love of Dora the Explorer continues, but that doesn’t mean she’s dropped troll dolls out of her life.

 

She spent some time with a Dora and a troll doll and a mirror today:

Foxie hold mirror and troll doll

Foxie hold troll and dora

Foxie's hand and foot with Dora

Foxie's hand holding troll doll

 

A sure sign of Foxie’s contentment is when she rubs her toes together, like in the photo below and in this video from a couple of years ago. If you’re wondering what the powdery stuff on Foxie’s feet is – it’s pollen. The pollen has been blowing off the trees like snow all week!

Foxie toe-rubbing

Missy’s retreat to safety

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Missy had a little scare on the hill this morning. Sometimes the chimps get spooked and we don’t know what caused it. None of the other chimps seemed to care, so I doubt it was anything truly threatening. Plus, when it is a snake or some other potentially dangerous animal, the chimps tend to stick around and alarm call instead of high-tailing it for the greenhouse. If it’s a serious threat, I think they want to keep track of its whereabouts and alert everyone else to the danger.

It gives me goosebumps to see the chimps traveling up Young’s Hill as a troop. It’s like a little glimpse of what could have been if they had not been born into captivity or stolen from their families in the wild.

This video, by the way, shows Burrito walking to the log bridge at the top of the hill, which as far as I know is the farthest he’s ever been. He’s at the back of the line in the video – if we’re feeling generous, we might say that he is guarding the troop from the rear. In reality, at this point I think he’s happy to let the five girls ahead of him deal with any threats they might encounter along the way. But give him time – we see him get more confident each day out there.

Foxie is a-Dora-ble

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Foxie has received so many new Dora the Explorer dolls in the last week- mostly from her great friend, Leslie Sodaro, who has been collecting for the last several weeks. We tied several together with a string, which resulted in some a-DORA-bleness.

Foxie has such great friends! On behalf of the lady herself, thanks so much to all for keeping Foxie so happy and enriched!

Queen of the hill

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Just before dinner, I looked up on the hill and saw Negra and Jody eating dandelion leaves on top of what we call “Missy’s Mound” (a small hill with a tunnel running through it). They were a good 150 feet or so from the building, which I think is the farthest that Negra has ever traveled up the hill. Negra has always been one of the most sedentary chimps that I’ve ever known; now it looks like Young’s Hill has finally given her a reason to get out of bed.