Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Foxie has hundreds of troll dolls, but she still loves getting new ones.
When she gets a new one, she usually cuddles it or holds it to her belly.
Sometimes she will take the troll for a stroll, putting it on her back the way a chimp mother might carry her child (that’s Jody on the left).
When she’s really excited about a new troll, she will play games with it, like balancing it on the rung of a ladder until it falls onto her belly.
This troll got to tour most of Young’s Hill today.
I don’t know very many chimpanzees that will laugh when playing all by themselves.
While Jody is very much a sweetheart when she wants to be, she does have her devilish side. She is often the first of the chimps to greet us humans in the morning- usually with a long kiss and a breathy pant. Her sweet almond-shaped eyes will make you melt.
but… she’s not always so innocent
Good thing troll dolls are loved with or without hair!
Foxie likes to not only rub her trolls on her own belly (and other dolls like Dora or a stuffed animal with JB’s face on it), but she also likes to gently rub their bellies with her thumb. This is just a picture so you can’t really see the action, but even with the troll upside down she’s still rubbing its belly.
When Foxie arrived at CSNW almost 4 years ago, she wanted nothing to do with toys and especially blankets. While in the lab, the chimps weren’t given much, if any enrichment so it would make sense that after 30 years of living in barren cages, a toy or a blanket would seem a bit foreign to her. When we discovered her love of troll dolls, her distaste for other toys faded some, but she would still toss aside a blanket that was in her way and preferred to sleep on the concrete floor. It’s only been in the last year that we have witnessed her making rudimentary signs of nesting behavior with blankets. I haven’t seen her nest too much lately, but last night, after locking up the chimp area, Elizabeth and I were on our way out the door when we happened to look up and see Foxie laying in the loft playing and nesting with a small blanket. Perhaps she’s a closet nester?
I know we’ve had a lot of posts about the snow lately, but I just couldn’t resist posting this adorable video from yesterday.
These were a big hit this morning.
