There are some chimps who are
especially, for lack of a better word, chimpy.
Despite being raised by and living amongst humans, they seem unaffected
by our presence, even the presence of those individuals who care for them day
after day. Of course, that means that
they really couldn’t give a hoot about me, the lowly researcher who is
curiously obsessed with collecting their feces.
Julia is one of these chimps. She’s always been an independent girl, and
according to the caregivers she decided when it was time for her to move from a
human house into the sanctuary by climbing high into a eucalyptus tree one
evening, building a nest, and refusing to come down until morning. (Edward, another fairly chimpy chimp joined
her in this activity and moved to the sanctuary that very morning with
her.) Integrating Julia was a walk in
the park, as she knew how to be submissive and respectful to every other chimp
in the group, and she easily took her place amongst the other females. Now Julia has a firm place in her family, and
is never confused by humans: she knows that chimps are her family and we’re
just the servants. She especially loves to steal Angela away from Mwanzo for
some quality cuddle time, and is one of the few chimps that Angela will climb
onto the back of for a ride.
Julia carrying Angela
This morning I had a hilarious
interaction with Julia while I was observing the chimps in the night house,
looking for poop. Julia was carefully
licking spilled juice off of the bars of the sleeping rooms, and despite my
standing directly in front of her, she was completely ignoring me. To get her attention I gently blew a puff of
air in her face. Immediately Julia
pulled away from the bars and scrunched up her eyes, then looked at me with
such disgust and annoyance, as if to say “how dare you, lowly human.” I immediately felt chagrined and crouched
down and grunted my apology, during which Julia seemed to see me for the first
time (well, possibly the second after I blew air right into her face) and
forgave me enough to offer her shoulder for me to groom.
Julia always looks a little bit scowly for some reason,
but she's really a very sweet girl.
Since then, she’s completely
ceased to acknowledge me once again.
--------------------------------------
Blogging update: Hi friends! For those of you trying to follow my travels through this blog, it's probably pretty hard since I've not updated it in more than a month. I've got a couple of back-logged posts I'm going to try to get up this week, and hopefully will resume blogging somewhat more regularly shortly. Apologies!
