Adventures with Jamie
September 20, 2014 by Diana -
Jamie is never one to shy away from adventure. If you are one of Jamie’s Chimpanzee Pals, you received an email from Katelyn yesterday with an update on some of her summer antics. One notable antic is Jamie’s frequent decision during the summer to stay out on the hill post-dinner, past the time we usually close it up for the night.
All of the staff have been staying late here and there to join Jamie on her post-dinner walks until she decides it’s time to go to bed, which is usually long after the other chimpanzees have bedded (nested?) down for the night.
Because J.B. and I live on the property, we often relieve the other staff at a certain point and take over so they can go home. This is what happened a few days ago. Katelyn had stayed a little over an hour beyond her designated shift, and I came up to the chimp house to watch over things.
Jamie immediately wanted to go on a walk, with me wearing her latest favorite black cowboy boot.
Sometimes Jamie’s walks seem goal-oriented and efficient: patrol the fence line and return to the greenhouse; but her late evening walks tend to be more exploratory, and she meanders off the path of the fence. Such was her mood the other night.
She got to the top of the hill and decided to jump up on one of the log bridges:
And walk to the end of the log:
Then sit on the other end:
And look into the distance:
Do a little self-grooming:
And sit some more, contentedly (I love a content Jamie!):
Then, she was ready to continue the patrol around the hill. When we got to the South side of the building, we discovered two of the neighbor’s cattle close by:
Jamie went into “defend the property mode”:
Which worked quite well:
Then it was back to the chimp house, and on to the next adventure, like foraging for lunch today:
It’s still difficult to fathom that this adventuresome, headstrong, curious and extremely intelligent chimpanzee lived for so long the way she did in her previous life as an entertainer and biomedical laboratory research subject, but she certainly knows how to make up for lost time, and we couldn’t be happier to watch her do it.
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Now this made me laugh. Loved it!!!1
The “Get off my lawn” posture is so universal.
Loved that – so good to see her enjoying life now 🙂
Does she vocalize when she defends the property? She is certainly an interesting character. I really don’t know she was able to cope with the conditions of her lab life. She is an extremely strong individual. Love her!
In this case, she did not vocalize – standing up and looking tough did the trick. Sometimes chimpanzees will “threat bark” at intruders or those who have wronged them in some way.
No need to worry… Jamie is on the look out…..
I love that Jamie stays out late. It is as if she knows it’s time to go to bed but she’s had enough ‘inside time’ in her life and has decided to garb all the fresh air and beauty she can while she can. I wonder if she will still stay out late once it begins to get dark earlier. Does she always go inside before it becomes dark?
So far she has been coming in before it gets dark. During the peak of the summer we had a couple of nights where she stayed out (or at least made sure we knew she didn’t want the door closed) until around 9:00. Now that it’s getting darker later, she’s usually back in by around 7:00.