Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Due to their size, Negra’s lips are strongly influenced by the earth’s gravitational forces. As the day wears on, it gets harder and harder for Negra to resist their slow, inevitable descent.
Stage 1: Wide awake
Stage 2: It’s been a long day
Stage 3: I could really use a nap
Stage 4: I’m just going to rest these here for a minute
Stage 5: Goodnight
Such a nice portrait:
Today is Bill’s birthday, and Tina Shih has sponsored the day in his honor. Tina says that Bill has been a great friend for over 25 years. Here’s to lasting friendships (and to birthdays)!
Thanks to Tina for thinking of the chimps, and happy birthday, Bill!
Foxie loves mirrors and tends to immediately make funny faces at herself whenever she sees her reflection (one of my favorite videos of Foxie in a mirror is this one from 2009– check it out). She’s been particularly interested in mirrors lately because she has an injury on her forehead that she has been inspecting, so today I put out a few extra mirrors so she could check herself out if she wanted to. Not to my surprise, she did just that – only she wasn’t as interested in looking at her wound as she was making funny faces at herself.
Joanne Pierce sponsored today for her friend Pam Dauphin’s birthday. Joanne says that Pam loves chimpanzees. We’re with you, Pam.
Happy day to both Pam and Joanne!
As Diana mentioned yesterday, she got some photos of the chimps enjoying their nightbags last Friday. As most of you know, Negra is the biggest fan of nightbags and almost seems to live for that time of the day. But the reality is, nightbags are truly loved by all. Each one of the chimps has their own ritual with nightbags. If we serve them in the greenhouse, everyone immediately scatters when they get their bag, heading off to a safe and more isolated location. Nightbags are a prized possession, so everyone is careful to ensure their bag is not stolen by someone. Jamie immediately goes up to the window sill, tears it open and dumps everything out so she can pick through what she wants to eat first. Negra doesn’t tend to move away very far, as eating it is her number one top priority (not to mention I think she knows no one would steal her nightbag!). She tears a hole in the bag and munches on it through the hole, allowing nut shells and empty sunflower seeds to collect on her belly. Jody tends to lay down to eat hers, usually tearing it open but leaving it neatly on the bag while she picks through the mix with her lips. Annie usually bites a hole in her bag and holds it like a cereal bowl. Foxie’s method is pretty similar to Annie’s, only she usually dumps small amounts in her hand and sorts through it there:
Missy usually tears it open and spreads it open like Jamie- a perk of being a more dominant chimp, in that you don’t have to worry about people stealing it as much so dumping it out isn’t as big of a deal. And then you get to go through and eat each nut and seed at your leisure:
Burrito uses the cereal bowl method as well though I think his favorite part is going back and sorting through people’s abandoned scraps!
I took some photos last night and had a whole blog post about night bags ruminating in my head, but then, today, this happened…
Negra finally spent some time in Negra’s Cabin!
The thinking behind the cabin that you helped us build through our 4th anniversary fundraising, was that the chimps, particularly fair-weather-loving Negra, needed a spot on the hill where they would be protected from the wind and rain, which we had both of today.
Here’s the full story of Negra’s big venture to her cabin –
Now that the snow is gone and we’ve had some warmer days, Negra has been spending a bit of her time on the hill, especially when we spread food around for the chimps to find. Below is a photo from last night of Negra heading back towards the greenhouse after gathering some sweet potato:
Generally, Negra’s been going out long enough to gather food, then coming back inside, but today was a little different.
The weather has been weird today. One minute sunny and warm, the next windy and overcast, and the next sleeting. There was a window of good weather around the chimps’ lunchtime, so we decided to set up a forage on the hill. We’re defrosting the freezer today, so J.B. took a hammer to some frozen watermelon that had been in the freezer for who knows how long and we included that in the lunch forage.
Jody went for the frozen watermelon in the cabin, and took her stash away as Negra approached:
Once in the cabin, Negra actually just sat for a while. I think and hope that she was realizing how great it is in there!
Jody got all of the watermelon from the cabin, but there was still some other food that Negra found:
Hopefully this is the first day of many that Negra will enjoy the warmth and protection of her cabin.
