So today's the day, Luau Day. Laura and I have been planning our enhanced enrichment theme for a couple of weeks. We decided that our theme would be "Dar, Tatu, and Loulis's Rocking Luau Day," mainly because we found a lot of super great luau decorations at the dollar store, so we figured we could build on that. We also built a bunch of cardboard box tiki-men, which we made into food puzzles, and lots of folks pitched in to make some more great decorations.
However, the piece-de-la-resistance, or rather, the "Pig-de-la-Resistance," would have to be the huge sacrificial pink cardboard pig that we built to hide pineapple in, lovingly named "Pepto." A luau isn't a luau without a pig roast, right?
Needless to say, we spent quite a while decorating the East Room, but it was totally worth it because the place looked great! We positioned ourselves in the observation area so that we could film and take pictures of the chimpanzees when they entered the room. The chimpanzees seemed pretty excited to come in and explore, too, although each took a different strategy: Dar headed straight for the pig, plucked the juicy red apple out of the pig's mouth, and proceeded to amble over to a nice quiet spot to enjoy his apple uninterrupted. After he was done with that, he found a coconut and headed up to enjoy it in the shaky tree, and later was observed leisurely leafing through a copy of Reader's Digest, coconut in foot.
Tatu had a range of strategies: first, a reconnaissance sweep of the entire room, checking nooks and crannies, and then, straight to the pig, which she proceeded to partially disembowel in search of pineapple. We were so happy that our pig was popular!
Loulis, on the other hand, apparently decided that the smaller forages were more to his liking, at least initially, and went for the tiki boxes and the smaller pigs that were scattered around the room, all of which had pineapple in them.
Later, though, Loulis took the pig to task and beat the living stuffing out of it. Poor Pepto was almost unrecognizable. At that point, all the chimpanzees were bagged out, apparently worn out by the morning's luau-tastic activities.
All in all, we like to think Luau Day was a big success. The only downside, of course, is that I am signed up to clean this afternoon. The "funeral" for Pepto is scheduled for 5:00pm.
However, the piece-de-la-resistance, or rather, the "Pig-de-la-Resistance," would have to be the huge sacrificial pink cardboard pig that we built to hide pineapple in, lovingly named "Pepto." A luau isn't a luau without a pig roast, right?
Needless to say, we spent quite a while decorating the East Room, but it was totally worth it because the place looked great! We positioned ourselves in the observation area so that we could film and take pictures of the chimpanzees when they entered the room. The chimpanzees seemed pretty excited to come in and explore, too, although each took a different strategy: Dar headed straight for the pig, plucked the juicy red apple out of the pig's mouth, and proceeded to amble over to a nice quiet spot to enjoy his apple uninterrupted. After he was done with that, he found a coconut and headed up to enjoy it in the shaky tree, and later was observed leisurely leafing through a copy of Reader's Digest, coconut in foot.
Tatu had a range of strategies: first, a reconnaissance sweep of the entire room, checking nooks and crannies, and then, straight to the pig, which she proceeded to partially disembowel in search of pineapple. We were so happy that our pig was popular! Loulis, on the other hand, apparently decided that the smaller forages were more to his liking, at least initially, and went for the tiki boxes and the smaller pigs that were scattered around the room, all of which had pineapple in them. Later, though, Loulis took the pig to task and beat the living stuffing out of it. Poor Pepto was almost unrecognizable. At that point, all the chimpanzees were bagged out, apparently worn out by the morning's luau-tastic activities.All in all, we like to think Luau Day was a big success. The only downside, of course, is that I am signed up to clean this afternoon. The "funeral" for Pepto is scheduled for 5:00pm.
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