Sanctuary
Just because she can
Jamie is someone to be admired for a few different reasons. She has, in many ways, overcome her terrible past, and she has established herself as the leader of the Cle Elum Seven chimpanzees. She is strong and knows what she wants. She seems to have a pretty good grasp of both chimpanzee and human behavior and uses this knowledge to her advantage whenever she can. And she doesn’t back down from a challenge, whether it comes from outside or it’s a personal challenge of her own inspiration.
Today, for example, Jamie had one of her favorite boots in the world, given to her practically off of his own feet by the Gallagher Fence representative. She carried the boot with her all day, even when she went out for her adventures on Young’s Hill. At one point, she spotted a piece of kale harvested from the garden (she’s been loving this kale!) that we had put on the treat rock. She got the piece of kale, but decided she wanted to climb the treat rock while holding the kale and her boot. A challenge!
She started on the south side of the rock
That proved difficult, so she scaled the rock from the front
She made it to the top and ate her kale
Then went right back down again
Calling for backup
Yesterday, Jamie was sitting in the greenhouse when she saw a squirrel running across the hill. The squirrel made it back safely to its den before Jamie could catch up, but unfortunately for the squirrel, Jamie now knows the location of its den. So of course she went to work trying to flush him out with a couple of bamboo canes. Here’s what we found when we went into the enclosure today:
This afternoon, Missy was returning from a trip she made to collect grass from the hill when she heard a strange noise coming from the same area. In this video, you can see her calling Jamie for backup. When the noise ceased, Missy and Jamie gave up and returned to eat their grass in the greenhouse.
Hill grass
Grass has always been a favorite treat for the Cle Elum Seven, so it’s been interesting to watch their reactions to the grass on Young’s Hill.
Annie loves to eat grass, but seems very uncomfortable walking on it. I’ve been referring to her as our resident gibbon- she walks bipedally and holds her hands out a bit from her sides and her gait is almost more of a waddle than a walk. I can’t say exactly why she does this, but I’m sure it feels strange to walk barefoot on grass after years and years of nothing but concrete.
Jamie, on the other hand, is a natural out there.
And how fun is it to harvest your own treat!?
Missy and Jody:
Missy:
Jamie:
Most Vigilant Person
I am officially giving the MVP award to Foxie, who has been making it farther and farther everyday on Young’s Hill. She’s gotten some encouragement and motivation from her friends, but today I put out some pieces of pineapple as a forage, and that seemed to be enough incentive for her to make it almost twice as far as she’s gone in the last few weeks! She made it almost all the way to the first platform. Yay, Foxie!
Cirque du Soleil at CSNW
Foxie is our resident acrobat here at the sanctuary. She’s always hanging upside down or doing pirouettes, and loves to engage us in active games where she will do all sorts of different gymnastics. Jamie, as many of our regular blog readers know, is the resident trickster—it’s appropriate that her birthday is on Halloween (just a couple weeks away!)
Watch Foxie being a goof and wait for Jamie to interrupt…
Back to the basics
As exciting as all these posts are about the hill, since not everyone is going out on the hill all the time, it’s resulted in some blog posting-neglect of certain folks. So here’s a photo I took of adorable Burrito this afternoon hanging out in the greenhouse, just like “the old days”. He and Negra are definitely creatures of habit.
