Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.

Enrichment

Structural Enrichment

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I have occasionally heard the word “enrichment” defined as items that are given to animals once their basic needs have been met.

In contrast, I think of enrichment as an entire philosophy, not just something extra that we do when our other work is done. For these chimpanzees and all other captive animals, enrichment is a basic need. Although survival would be possible without enrichment, thriving would not. Here at the sanctuary, every aspect of our daily routine, from meal preparation to cleaning, is done with the ultimate goal of keeping the chimpanzees happy and healthy. There is no easy way to group items or activities into “enrichment” or “not enrichment.” We just enrich everything.

In addition to distributing troll dolls, cowboy boots and slinkies, our team designs and builds new structures for the chimpanzees. The way in which we design and furnish the facility is considerate of the chimpanzee’s physical and emotional needs, and we often add or change components of the enclosures to keep the surroundings interesting and functional for the chimps. A great example is the network of firehose “vines” that transects the Playroom, Greenhouse, Hill, and new wing of enclosures. The video posted above shows how Jamie gets to use the firehose however she wants, giving her a greater degree of choice in addition to the obvious security and stability that such additions provide.

We’re also excited to share a photo of a new firehose hammock, modeled by Level III volunteer and CWU graduate student Chad. Several volunteers and interns helped staff and contractors to furnish the chimpanzee areas of the Phase 1 expansion with benches, firehose, hammocks, and ladders. The new hammock is hanging in the upstairs mezzanine enclosure, and will hopefully be enjoyed by the sanctuary’s newest residents once they arrive!

Pitter-Patter

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Today was all about hustle.

It began with few solid hours of continuous serving, shifting, checking, cleaning, and enriching. The morning team of volunteers (Keri, Jon and Miranda) made sure that tasks got done swiftly and thoroughly. The Playroom was scrubbed and disinfected, the meals were prepared and served, and the laundry was washed and dried. The vibe was contagious. Enthusiasm was in the air.

Level III Volunteer Erin J.

People went back and forth like worker bees droning around a hive. It was honestly a bit difficult to keep track of all the humans going from place to place, carrying out tasks and coordinating with each other. The staff spent the day furnishing the new chimp areas and attending meetings, Dr. Erin swung by for a visit, volunteer Lizz stopped by to serve the chimps’ lunch, volunteer Erin came in to prepare dinner and enrichment, and the whole team even found time to prepare some firehose for enrichment projects. Everyone was on a mission.

The new wing of enclosures, currently nearing completion!

The bustle around the Chimp House continued through the afternoon and well past the chimps’ dinner, so I felt relieved when the chimpanzees allowed me to close off Young’s Hill, turn off the lights in the Playroom, and begin locking the Chimp House doors for the night.

My relief was short-lived, however, because Jamie wanted something. There she was, an ape silhouette behind the Playroom caging, gesturing at me to bring her something. I checked to see if she wanted boots, then books, then books about boots. She insisted on having something else.

I sat down near the caging and gave her a long plastic tool which she used to groom my shoelaces, inspect my tattoos, and poke at my freckles. She was entertained for a couple of minutes, but the diversion subsided and she began to demand something else. I took off one of my Timberlane hiking boots and managed to wiggle my foot halfway into a woman’s leather cowboy boot, which she seemed to find unimpressive. I even reached for a children’s book about monkeys jumping on a bed and read it aloud, showing Jamie the pictures as I went. I altered the story to make it about Jamie going to bed while I locked up the building and went home. She was not amused.

Jamie using a tool to groom my boot.

We caregivers always work in teams, and I soon had to ask caregiver Katelyn for help with appeasing Jamie. We rummaged around the kitchen and enrichment bins, trying to see the Chimp House from Jamie’s perspective and identify the object of her desire. Boots? Nope. Dolls? Meh. Another grooming tool? (-_-). Troll scarves? Closer. A raspberry? Close enough.

Katelyn drops enrichment into the chute for Jamie.

With Jamie (temporarily) satisfied by the tiny red raspberry, we quickly said “goodnight” and retreated from view.

There aren’t many captive chimps who demand as much from their caregivers as Jamie does. This weekend was fast-paced and full of activity, so it’s only fitting that Jamie gave us a little extra work on Sunday evening. We’ll see what she has on the itinerary for tomorrow.

Jamie grooming another chimp this morning.

Watching from a Distance

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Hanging out with chimps is fun. Watching them hang out with each other is even better.

Chimpanzees grooming each other. From left to right: Foxie, Annie, Jody, Missy and Burrito

For sanctuary personnel who are trained to engage in protected contact with the chimpanzees, developing close relationships with the individual chimps is undoubtedly one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. I cannot think of another experience that comes close to having Missy approach the caging and ask to be massaged, or being prodded with a wooden tool by Jamie as she inspects your freckles, or stomping around the hallways with Burrito to begin the day. There is something surreal about greeting, grooming, and playing with beings who are not quite human but are definitely something similar. To call these exchanges “perks” would be an understatement.

These aren’t my favorite moments, though.

What brings me the most joy is to see the chimpanzees being independent and going about their activities as if I didn’t exist. A true sanctuary allows chimpanzees to do this, if and when they choose to do so. There are times when I see the chimps foraging way up on the hill, far from the bustle of the Chimp House, and I think that this is how our relationship with chimpanzees would be in a perfect world. Our interactions would be limited to fleeting glimpses in a forest, and chimps would not be kept in captivity or subjected to exploitation. They could go wherever they wanted to go and be whatever they wanted to be.

Missy

Today, Level II volunteer Dusty prepared a mixture of chopped vegetables and chow and we spread these items outside for the chimps to forage. As the chimpanzees fanned out across the grassy landscape and climbed over the maze of wooden structures, keeping them in our line of sight became a challenge. The chimps didn’t seem to notice the group of human visitors sitting at the bottom of the hill, and I felt irrelevant as I tried to observe them with binoculars and capture them with the camera lens.

Jody
Annie
Negra (left) and Missy (right)
Jody

Negra was more interested in exchanging an open-mouthed chimp kiss with her friend Missy, Annie was busy searching for food in the prairie grass, and Jody was determined to collect the rest of the cat-tails and bring them back to the Greenhouse. Missy eventually disappeared in the bamboo, only to reappear minutes later as a fuzzy speck perched high on a shaded platform. Dr. Jane Goodall’s first sightings of free-ranging chimpanzees in Tanzania came to mind. Missy, far off in the distance, didn’t seem too different from the wild apes that Dr. Goodall watched through binoculars from a distant hillside. In many ways, I think that’s the main point.

Missy
Missy (far away)

Even if these seven chimpanzees can never experience life in the wild as their ancestors did, at least they still get to be chimpanzees.

 

 

New food puzzle!

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We recently introduced the chimps to their newest food puzzle, these giant firehose cubes! Volunteers stuffed all 6 pockets on the cubes with a variety of enrichment and hidden treats for them to find, and we put them out as part of a playroom forage. Jessica Mayhew (who wears many hats as CSNW board member/ caregiver volunteer/Central Washington University professor) had her class assemble these puzzles for us to use for many years to come. Many thanks to Jessica and the students in the spring quarter “Apes” class at CWU!

After the party

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The day after a party means different things for different people. For the chimpanzees, it means continuing to enjoy any leftover treats, especially anything that may have been missed during a Young’s Hill forage, and general lolling about to rest and recover.

Even Negra went out first thing to look for leftovers from the Easter bunny:

Annie and Foxie:

Missy:

For the humans, the day after a party means party clean-up! Also for the chimpanzees, it means the humans not bothering them with cleaning details. So you may see the dilemma. For the humans, not the chimps. 😉  Case in point, we have been attempting to access and clean the party room, aka the greenhouse, all weekend. Multiple times a day we’ve offered the chimps all manner of exciting opportunities to vacate the greenhouse and enjoy a forage, a treat, a piece of gum in the playroom. Every single time there has been a lot of running back and forth, in and out, and then just as you think everyone has agreed to come inside for a few minutes, there is one person holding steadfast in their choice to decline the humans’ invitation.

Which lately has been this tiny lady:

Along with the support of her good friend, Jody:

I’m not going to lie. We pulled out all the stops. Despite an exciting forage going on in the playroom, here Foxie sat with her dolls in the toasty hot, after-party mess of a greenhouse. I offered, “Chow (a Foxie favorite!!)?” “No, thank you.”….”Half a banana?” “No thank you.” It was then that I got it. If she was turning down some of her favorites, she was truly content exactly where she was. And it no longer became important to try and get in to clean at that time. There’s always after dinner…maybe.

In the end, I fully appreciate that the chimpanzees get this agency over their lives, to choose when and where they want to move to and what they want to participate in. The joy they receive from enrichment such as parties and the pleasure that lingers afterward, or just the contentment that comes with relaxing in a warm greenhouse on a sunny spring day makes any effort on our parts more than worth the effort. And who knows, maybe they are just doing a little “caregiver enrichment” in making us think a little more creatively, outside the box. 😉

And a bonus photo! One of our fabulous volunteers took the unbelievable time and care to make the amazing Easter baskets the chimps had yesterday. Burrito found them to be useful for all manner of shenanigans:

And oh! A bonus bonus photo! We DID make it to the greenhouse to clean while the chimps enjoyed an extra exciting dinner forage and grab bags for enrichment. Jamie was late to dinner when I noticed her searching for some reading material. A food magazine. Which she carried through dinner. The chimps are all curled into their night nests as I write this and I just glanced through the window, surprised to see busy boss lady, Jamie, who is usually still up when we leave for the night, already at rest for the evening. And then I noticed her reading material. She is a surprise and a delight every.single.day.

Chimpanzees who collect

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Personally, I’ve never been much of a collector. I am not very neat, but I do enjoy when my surroundings are clutter-free. There’s a particular joy I get out of getting rid of things and thereby decreasing rather than increasing my possessions. But I’m fascinated by collectors and those who clearly get a unique satisfaction in their things.

It’s all the more fascinating to care for two chimpanzee collectors. Foxie is pretty famous for her doll collection, and most people who have been tuning in to our blog for a while know that Jamie loves cowboy boots. You might have also learned that she can be pretty into books too; when the two combine – books about cowboy boots – well, that must be something akin to heaven for her.

For a couple of weeks now, she’s been carrying around a book called Texas Boots purchased by a Jamie-fan through our Amazon.com wish list.

To say that she loves this book might be an understatement or a mischaracterization. Maybe there’s a particular word that describes the feeling collectors have for their things that transcends mere everyday love.

One interesting aspect of both Jamie’s and Foxie’s collections and how they interact with their chosen objects is that they share them with the humans. Jamie wants the staff and volunteers to put on her most cherished boots. Foxie passes her dolls to trusted caregivers for safekeeping and games of toss.

And now Jamie slides her beloved books and magazines under the caging so that we can carry them with us while we follow her around the outdoor expanse of Young’s Hill on her walks or just back and forth through the building.

This is the new routine.

Earlier this week, she passed me the Texas Boots book after we had finished up a session of Positive Reinforcement Training. I expected that we would carry out our usual post-PRT routine and walk around the hill, but it was a little dreary outside. So, instead, I sat on the other side of the caging with Jamie in the greenhouse and turned the pages of the book for her to see. She would focus longer on the images of people wearing boots, and she would nod her head when I turned a page, which is generally Jamie-speak for, “yes, I like that.” After flipping through the book a couple of times, I offered to give it back to her, and she took it.

She tucked it under her arm and continued to sit on the other side of the caging. We sat in contented silence in each other’s company like that for about five minutes (which is a really long time for an active chimpanzee!), until she got up to go about other activities.

It was one of the finest moments I’ve ever had with another being of any kind.

Jamie certainly has a way of implanting the desire to find more things that she likes – to fill her life with these moments of satisfaction that I can’t say that I completely understand, but that I appreciate beyond words.

Her boots, all of them donated to her, have been outgrowing their plastic bins for a while now, and it just so happened that the boot closet we were using for staff cleaning boots was emptied now that we have more space in Phase 1 of the expansion. So, I had the idea that we should put Jamie’s boots and other sundry things in that closet.

It’s in the perfect location because Jamie can see it from the playroom loft.

I had moved Jamie’s things into the closet when Anna was on vacation last week. Anna returned on Tuesday, and Jamie wasted no time in pointing out to Anna this exciting new home for her personal treasures. In case you too want to add to Jamie’s collection, I’ve added some more books to our wish list. When we receive items, we will put them in her closet so she can point them out for us to get for her.

In case you are worried that the other chimpanzees feel left out, I think they are just as mystified by Jamie’s attraction to certain objects as I am. Once in a while, I see Missy flipping through a book, and I even gave one to Burrito last week, which he unceremoniously tossed to the ground and walked away.

I guess you have to be a collector to get it.