Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
It is such an incredible joy to see Missy on Young’s Hill using all of the structures for climbing and leaping and balancing and just sitting up high. She does not waste any opportunity to get the most out of the chance to move and explore.
J.B.’s description of Missy as, “a spring that was coiled up for decades, just waiting to be released” remains perfect. Just see for yourself in the photos that J.B. took this morning during a forage on the hill. Go, Missy, Go!
Missy and Annie covered nearly every inch of Young’s Hill today during a spirited game of chase.
After being chased across the field, Annie took to the climbing structure, and Missy followed.
Another dash across the field.
And then another climbing structure.
Annie tried to get away to the shaky bridge but Missy got her by the foot.
But then it all ended in classic Missy style as she crashed end-over-end onto the bridge…with a smile.
Missy tends to speed up in the winter. I think she knows she won’t be able to stay outside as long so she has to cram all of her activities into ten-minute bursts.
Yesterday, she ran outside and immediately started to climb all of the structures.
Then she jumped off of them.
While climbing a structure at the top of the hill, she noticed something.
Ice is somewhat of a delicacy for chimps and Missy is good at finding it.
Of course, wherever there’s a Missy, there’s an Annie close behind, trying to catch up.
Earlier this week, Burrito did some more exploring of Young’s Hill with Jody.
Jamie climbed to the top of one of the bouncy bridge posts.
Missy and Jody played chase.
Once Missy picked up the pace, though, Jody couldn’t keep up.
The biggest news of all is that Negra ventured out to check out her cabin yesterday. Luckily Jackie and Debbie captured these photos or I would have had a hard time believing it. She didn’t make it all the way inside the cabin, but it was a big first step for her. You just never know when Negra is going to switch things up and try something new.
We’re not the only ones that get excited when the chimps do something out of their comfort zone – the other chimps get excited too. As Negra sat by the cabin, she was greeted by a parade of her friends who came by to reassure her with hugs and kisses.
Jamie decided that she would start Year Two on Young’s Hill by trying some new things. She started by testing out a small structure we built this summer.
Then she moved on to the bamboo. I don’t know if it’s a difference in skill or just a difference in weight, but Missy made it much higher before the whole thing toppled over.
Either way, she seemed to be having fun.
Earlier this summer, when Ben and the Boy Scouts were building the new bridge, I put up some log posts around the enclosure. Some of the logs were far too heavy to lift with our tractor, so I cut them up into smaller pieces and made little stumps for the chimps to sit on. Brilliant idea, J.B., I thought to myself, as I patted myself on the back. And then three months went by without the chimps even looking in their direction.
Well, today was the day that stumps became cool. Everybody was doing it. First up was Foxie:
Then Annie:
And then, farther down the hill, Missy and Annie together:
The chimps are funny that way. They require you to be patient.
When we built Young’s Hill, I had dreams of the chimps going out in the morning and not coming back until evening. But they weren’t ready for that. To them, Young’s Hill is an exciting playground, a wide open space that is both exhilarating and frightening. But they can only take so much excitement before they retreat to the greenhouse to relax in the comfort of something more familiar to them.
Over the last year, they’ve pushed their boundaries and conquered some of their fears. Each day they try something new.
This morning, a year and a day after going outside for the first time, the chimps went out onto the hill in a group and many of them didn’t come back until lunch time.
That’s progress.
I managed to find the missing footage taken from the GoPro camera earlier this week. I think it’s interesting to see how the chimps see the world from within their enclosure.
As Jackie mentioned, most of the new posts that you can see in this video will be used to support a wood and fire hose bridge made by the Boy Scouts. While the scouts were working on this over the weekend, we put in about 20 other posts that will one day become climbing structures, tree houses, and crow’s nest lookouts. The money for some of these projects was donated during the fund-a-need portion of last year’s auction. Our goal is to connect all of the structures on Young’s Hill with bridges, beams, and fire hose so that the chimps can move around the two-acre enclosure without having to set foot on the ground.
This sanctuary is definitely a work in progress. But I mean that in a good way, in that we will always add new things and change others to keep life interesting for the chimps.
Check out the play face as she climbs the timber bamboo. No one has more fun than Missy.
(In case you were wondering, she held on all the way down and had a safe landing)
