After several days of beautiful sunshine, we’re having a gray and rainy afternoon today. Not surprisingly, the chimpanzees are staying warm and dry inside curled up with as many blankets as they can find. Jody has no complaints.
Cle Elum
Friends
Burrito can be a little intimidated by the other chimpanzees. Because of his social anxiety, he tends to play much more with his human friends than with his chimpanzee family, but he and Foxie have a special friendship (learn more about that here).
Icecapades
During the lunch forage on Young’s Hill today, Jody and Missy found their own treats. As volunteer Connie pointed out, this could be the last of the tire ice for the season!
Jody:
Missy:
The Queen Gets Some Fresh Air
Most of the chimpanzees think being outside on Young’s Hill is worth tolerating some less than ideal weather conditions. Jamie even went for a perimeter walk in the rain recently.
But Negra has her standards. If the weather is less than perfect in any way, she wants no part of the outdoors. Luckily, today is beautiful and Negra was happy to participate in the lunch forage on Young’s Hill.
Lunch
For lunch today, caregiver Lisa served the chimpanzees corn, cauliflower, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, snow peas, and red onions.
Annie with a corn cob wadge (you can see that chimps don’t have the same hangups about “table manners” as we do):
Negra with a mouthful of cauliflower glancing out the window on her way to her favorite spot on the catwalk:
Jody:
Missy heading upstairs with her haul:
She settled in front of the window for a lunchtime view of the valley:
Happy Birthday, Michael!
Today was sponsored by Michael Miller. Michael generously chose to celebrate his own birthday by honoring the chimpanzees today! We have the best supporters. Thank you so much, Michael! We all send loud and raucous pant hoots wishing you the happiest of birthdays and a big birthday forage!
Negra gone wild
It was perfect weather for chimpanzees here at the sanctuary this morning (in Cle Elum, this means warm sun with no wind!) so we decided to put out a breakfast forage on Young’s Hill. All of the chimps seemed more at ease and peaceful on the Hill today than I have ever seen them! No one appeared to feel the need to keep an eye on where everyone else was and just went about peacefully foraging in their own direction. Much to our surprise and delight Negra went further than I have seen her go yet! She immediately headed for the far side of the Hill and promptly sat down to check out the neighbor’s horses. I even saw her glance upward occasionally listening to the birds overhead. And as if that weren’t enough, Negra continued to roam and explore even further, enjoying handfuls of grass along the way. We were astounded and couldn’t stop taking photos! I think even the other chimps were excited to see Negra venturing so far. In the end it seemed to me that Negra had enough of all the paparazzi and promptly turned her back on everyone just to enjoy her adventure on her own.
I think Annie, Jody and Missy were as much in awe of Negra as we were!
