Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Foxie

Two months since Young’s Hill

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Today marks the two month anniversary of the opening of Young’s Hill. Coincidentally it was also volunteer Katelyn’s birthday, so we did have a small party for the chimps. It was only later that I realized we could have also considered it the anniversary party! Here’s some (hopefully) never before seen pictures of the first day on Young’s Hill. I can’t believe it has already been two months! In just that short amount of time we’ve seen the chimps grow more and more comfortable on the hill, and I expect that when next summer rolls around (and all the snow is gone!) they will stay for hours and hours basking in the sun and looking up at the open sky. I watched the KOMO news story again today, and it still warms my heart. It was such an amazing, emotional, and remarkable day.

Annie giving Missy a reassuring kiss
Missy playing chase with Negra
Annie
Burrito
Foxie
Jamie
Jody
Missy
Negra

Snowballs

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You may notice in this video that the chimps often hold the snow out on their extended lower lip to inspect it. This behavior is common with wadges, the clumps of fibrous foods such as seeds and leaves that chimpanzees chew and suck the juice out of (see below). For some reason, chimps love to inspect their wadges as they chew them. Perhaps snow falls into the same category to them, or maybe it’s just too cold to keep in their mouths.

Annie with a wadge of cattails

 

iEnrich

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Today is sort of rainy out, so we wanted to enrich the chimpanzees with some indoor activity. Sometimes we play the TV for them, which some folks seem to really enjoy. We also know that the chimps like to watch themselves in mirrors, so I thought they might be interested in “Photo Booth,” which is an App on the iPad (and it’s also on most Mac computers) where you can take pictures of yourself. Foxie and Burrito seemed to think it was pretty cool, and I’m glad we were able to come up with some fun rainy day enrichment.

Security

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Foxie seems to be getting more and more comfortable on the hill each day. Today, I saw her climb up each of the climbing structures, including one that is fairly far away, and she even played a little bit of chase with Missy. She always has her trolls out there with her, though, which I think of as a security thing. She often lets them ride on her back while she walks around to explore, but as you’ll see below, sometimes there just isn’t enough room for all those “babies” on her back.

Today on Young’s Hill

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I put out a lettuce forage and everybody—even Negra and Burrito—spent some time on the hill today, despite it being pretty cold out. I didn’t get a photo of everyone, but here’s a few shots from this afternoon:

Time on the hill and relatives

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We have had pretty sunny weather lately, but it’s getting colder and colder these days (we even have snow in the forecast!) so the chimps have been spending less and less time on Young’s Hill, but that does not mean that they don’t want the option! As I type, Jody is blocking the door in the raceway, even though no one, including her, has had any interest in going out there for at least the last hour. It’s all about choices around here, so I’ll give her as much time as she needs.

Here are a few photos from the last couple of days of folks enjoying the hill. I’m pretty much addicted to taking photos of people out there. I still can’t get over it.

Missy:

Annie:

Foxie has been getting more comfortable and ambitious on the hill these days:

as is Burrito:

Speaking of Burrito, I recently learned that Burrito has a half brother, Clay, who lives at Save the Chimps in Florida. Clay and Burrito have the same father, Mack, who passed away at Save the Chimps a little over a year ago, and Clay’s mother is none other than our Jody! One of our former volunteers, Janie, is working at Save the Chimps now and reported that Clay has many of the same mannerisms as Jody and Burrito, including Mr. B’s signature always-pilo erect hair (pilo erect is the technical term for when your hair stands on end). Check out Clay’s profile on the Save the Chimps website. To me, he looks almost exactly like Burrito with Jody’s almond eyes. The last photo on Clay’s page is a photo of his profile. I found the following older photo of Burrito for comparison.