Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Foxie

My friend, Foxie

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One of the most common, if not impossible, questions I get about the chimpanzees is, “Who is your favorite?” Impossible! They each are, for their individual uniqueness. To me it’s a privilege just to be in their presence let alone be able to call them my friends. We all have different relationships with each of the chimpanzees, built in their own time and way. Some of the chimpanzees choose to engage with their human caregivers frequently, whereas some of them prefer the company of their chimpanzee friends. And just as with human friends, you find that for whatever reasons you seem to just “click” or bond with certain individuals in a certain way. You’re especially happy to see each other when you’ve been apart, you enjoy just spending time in each others company, you learn from each other, respect each other for who you are, and you laugh together often. Maybe one of you even does pirouettes and back flips when you see each other! For reasons you cannot often articulate, you consider them one of your dearest friends. And so it is for me with Foxie. Sometimes I feel my heart will burst with all the love I have for this chimpanzee woman.

While we all hope that we are making each of the chimpanzees lives better given their life circumstances, we certainly wish they had been able to live the lives they were meant to. When acknowledging that their lives would have been better off not knowing humans at all, it can sometimes be difficult to also acknowledge that this includes me. And while I wish Foxie’s life could have been different, I am so honored to call her my friend.

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Good friends, good times

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Mornings here at the sanctuary are busy times. The caregivers arrive, prepare breakfast for the chimpanzees, and, then, are usually engaged in quite a lot of cleaning. I love cleaning, it’s like having my own personal workout regimen that does wonders for my arms! My absolute favorite part of the day though is after we’ve accomplished some work and we can enjoy the company of good friends. Grooming and play are the most frequent forms of social enrichment for the humans as well as the chimpanzees. A quiet afternoon, hanging out with chimpanzee friends is the best way I know of to while away time in this heat!

Learn more about the function of chimpanzees grooming from previous posts.

Foxie and the garter snake

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Chimps are very investigative, defensive, and at times aggressive. Combine all these characteristics and add a small garter snake into the equation and you get a whole group of chimps ready to attack an intruder! This morning a garter snake made its way into the greenhouse and the chimps were on high alert. Everyone took a second to peer at it, but most kept their distance. Foxie, however, showed a lot of bravery and was doing her best to protect her home by trying to attack the snake (but without touching it).

The chimps encounter snakes every now and then. They’re very careful not too get too close to something that raises so much alarm, which is a smart instinct. Thankfully, garter snakes are completely harmless so there’s nothing to really worry about if they do touch it. In fact after filming this attack, I closed off the greenhouse and picked up the snake (who was still alive) and took him to a nice garden area that I thought he’d pretty happy about. I apparently don’t have a huge fear of snakes because I was holding him for awhile, talking to volunteers Patti and Connie about how we were going to set up today’s lunch forage, when they said “will you just put that snake down already?!” Like I said, harmless 🙂

The snakes seem to be good at “playing dead” so as not to actually get killed. At the end of the video you’ll see that Jamie was fairly convinced Foxie had taken care of the problem, and then left it alone. I was glad to be able to rescue it and find that he was not at all harmed.

Thank you, Tracy!

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Today was sponsored by Tracy Headley who is “celebrating starting summer by seeing a pal.”  Thank you so much for including the chimpanzees in your fun, Tracy! I think your Chimpanzee Pal, Foxie, will be celebrating the start of summer with her pals right along with you!

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Celebrating Freedom

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The Cle Elum Seven are celebrating freedom today! Not long ago, they spent their holidays in lab cages. Today they foraged on Young’s Hill, lounged in the warm greenhouse, and played with friends.

We kicked off the day with a party in the greenhouse this morning. Volunteer caregivers Denice and Patti brought food and decorations. Fruit smoothie was set out in tiny plastic shot glasses, and we put out paper trays of apples, grapes, berries, and melon.

Burrito:

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Negra:

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Jody:

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Annie:

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Missy:

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Jamie:

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Later we served a special holiday lunch of vegan hot dogs, dill pickles, and bell peppers stuffed with pasta salad. We do our best to keep the chimpanzees healthy by limiting their diet almost entirely to fresh produce, but we thought we’d splurge a little today.

Everyone gathered as Patti got ready to serve:

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Foxie:

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Negra:

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Annie:

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Missy:

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Burrito:

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Thanks again to Jody Maxey for thinking of the chimps and sponsoring today. Happy 4th, everyone!

Snow-cones

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We appear to be on the downside of our heat wave here in Cle Elum (at least for today), but it’s still too hot for the chimpanzees to get excited about doing very much.  They haven’t even been spending much time in the greenhouse, preferring the comfort of the cooler playroom.  So today we decided to break out the snow cone machine and filled paper cups with shaved ice, berries, and coconut water.  This, the chimpanzees got pretty excited about and there were pant hoots and food squeaks galore.  (Some of these may have even come from the staff and volunteers).  After everyone collected their snow-cones it became very quiet with the exception of a lot of slurping!

Foxie enjoying her snow-cone (with Negra in the background).

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Burrito was still excited in this photo (you can tell because his hair is pilo-erect, which means standing on end).

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