Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Jamie

Warm Sunshine & Lemmon’s Willow

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This morning everyone wanted to eat chow outside! It was a perfectly brisk morning with warm sunshine, no complaints there.

Jody in her usual spot on Young’s Hill:

Jody was breathy panting with excitement for Missy to come join her:

Jody, Missy, and Foxie heading out:

Foxie:

Annie took her chow out to a log and enjoyed some solitude:

Burrito joining the ladies:

After the Green House was cleaned we put in some new foliage called Lemmon’s willow. The chimps had never tried this before and we were interested to see who would like it. We assumed Jody would, but we actually found almost all the chimps wadging on it at one point in the day, particularly Jody, Annie, Burrito, and Missy!

Jody munching on a Lemmon’s willow branch:

Missy snagging a branch:

Missy took a branch bigger than her inside to snack on:

**BONUS**

Today’s daytime enrichment was firehose knots with nuts and seeds inside. As I was walking around and snapping some photos I found Jamie enjoying what looked like 3 or 4 knots and a troll sock tied around her ankle. She had tied it herself and had been casually strutting around with it. However, once she saw that I noticed the anklet she took it off discreetly (it was very hard to get a picture of this).

Jamie with her troll anklet:

 

Sweet September

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This weekend we host our last two summer visits for our supporters for the year. These small visits feature an educational talk from one of our staff members and a chance to view the chimpanzees as they forage for their lunch on Young’s Hill. Today’s lunch forage featured highly prized whole sweet corn (husk and all!).

Burrito spent most of his time picking up primate chow, but managed to get some corn too:

Foxie enjoyed some corn and a good view from one of the towers:

Jamie:

Negra:

Missy:

Jody made several trips outdoors to get her lunch:

There’s no better time to eat corn on the cob than in September -or at least Annie thinks so. She “won” the forage today by collecting the most corn and scaling the Escher structure for that final piece!

Jamie

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Sometimes when I hangout with Jamie there is a moment when it hits me how overwhelmingly cool she is.

Today, this was that moment:

Bonus Foxie with her strawberry shortcake doll:

Of course there are many points in the day when I come to this realization about Jamie or any of the other chimps. For example Jamie was having a great day today and at a certain point after lunch she was ready for her current favorite boot. As I quietly (so as to not disturb Jamie) played spin-kiss the doll-pass it back to Foxie, Jamie gathered her blankets and boots while quietly breathy panting in contentment and excitement for what was going to be a great nap. Unfortunately, we can’t always capture those moments in a photo!

What’s for Lunch?

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Today we had a very fall colored lunch! The chimps enjoyed carrots, tomatoes, and some sweet potatoes. There were lots of food grunts and squeaks all through the chimp house.

Jamie stood on higher ground to get a good view of what was served:

Missy also climbed up to get a view (mostly for the tomatoes):

Burrito holding on to some sweet potato:

Negra was really enjoying the sweet potato (Neggie was not as interested in the cut up tomato, she only really likes them whole):

Jamie on her firehose perch:

Volunteer Lizz serving Annie some tomatoes:

Did we mention Missy’s favorite food is tomatoes?:

Jamie loading up on the veggies:

Negra patiently waiting for her carrot while the wind causally blows through her hair:

 

 

 

 

How’s your chimp ID?

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One of the first things new chimp house volunteers start learning is how to identify each of the chimpanzees. When you’re meeting a group of chimps for the first time (or the first ten times), they can often look frustratingly similar to one another. Eventually, of course, they start to look like individuals and you wonder how you could ever have mixed them up. But there’s a definite learning curve.

It helps to be able to spend some time just staring at each chimpanzee, so I just made these videos for our volunteers, in which you can see each of the seven chimpanzees from every angle, just being themselves. I thought some of our blog followers might appreciate them also. And if you’re not interested in working on your chimp ID, the videos make seven good excuses just to look at each of these beautiful chimps for several minutes.

(For extra credit, click on each name below to learn some identifying physical characteristics for each individual).

Annie:

Burrito:

Foxie:

Jamie:

Jody:

Missy:

Negra:

Burrito’s Close-up

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Being the only male can be hard…

But who could resist this handsome fellow!

Here are a few extra photos…

Missy eating apples on the Hill this morning:

Missy foraging for corn at lunch:

Jody’s loot today:

Negra was really excited about corn:

Annie did pretty well during the lunch forage:

Foxie:

And then there is Jamie (she has been enjoying her new firehose swing):

 

 

Annie’s Birthday Bash

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What a day of celebrating beautiful, dear, sweet Annie! We decided to have the party on Young’s Hill, the chimps’ 2-acre outdoor habitat and it was complete with a chimp favorite, watermelon bowls filled with lettuce, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, onions, and cabbage, and a new treat of banana leaves filled with roasted sweet potatoes and onions and leftover watermelon, and beautiful organic sunflowers strewn about!

Aren’t these amazing?! They’re bigger than Kelsi! 🙂 We have the best volunteers who found a recipe for wrapping good stuff in squares of the leaves and another who found them in Seattle for us! Something completely new for the chimps!

Here’s the birthday lady opening her banana leaf packet:

Jody was actually first onto the hill and was very excited to make it back with two watermelon bowls! I caught her mid-blink – sorry Jo! – and food squeaking with delight:

Negra’s approach to the forage was to wait for Jody to bring her haul back to the greenhouse and promptly try to take it!:

Jody kindly let her have one. That said, when Jody came back later with another one she wasn’t so willing to give it up which the Queen wasn’t too happy about, though she did get what Jody couldn’t shovel in fast enough. Oh, Neggie:

Burrito found a bowl for himself and started to make his way back to the greenhouse food squeaking all the way. But he stopped short when he saw Jody and Negra near the raceway and decided to try and play it cool so as not to attract their attention (or probably more specifically, Negra’s). You can see how excited he is by his hair standing on end (pilo-erect):

Of course, he couldn’t wait too long before taking some bites:

Jamie’s tactic was to collect everything she wanted and put it in a good place to return to when she was ready:

Missy:

Annie and Jody out for more:

And Foxie! She was way out on one of the structures by herself when she found a watermelon bowl.

Then…Oh. My. Heart! We could hear Foxie food squeaking with excitement when all of a sudden she just couldn’t contain herself! When chimpanzees are overwhelmed with excitement or fear they will often express a facial gesture known as a “fear grimace.” This is what Foxie is doing here, but she was SUPER excited. Usually others chimps are nearby and they reassure one another, but Foxie just kept looking at us from afar as if to say, “Do you see this??!! Watermelon bowls!!! I just can’t…” We love how excited the chimpanzees get over something as seemingly simple as fresh food. It never seems to get old for them and certainly seeing their joy never gets old for us.

Happy 44th, Annie! May all your days and years ahead be filled with more love, joy and adventure than you ever imagined. We love you so very much!