Fort Pierce - Animals

DAY 3:

Today's day began bright and early with the majority of our group getting out for an early morning run. We ran with the company of a beautiful sunrise and the nearby moo's of dozens of curiously watching calves. Shortly after, we packed our lunches and were prepped and ready to go for our third day of service at Save the Chimps sanctuary.

Upon arrival, we were given our main service focus for the day: painting. In Misery -oops, Missouri-, the task of painting a couple of buildings may not seem too desirable. With the sun forcing eyes to squint and skin to burn, it could be seen as quite a laborious task. However, with the help of 11 friends, an extremely helpful and encouraging staff (S/O Jeff), the mutual entertainment flowing between us, and the anxiously watching chimps peering through the windows of the buildings, the day flew by. Within no time, the 'Air Force' island was covered in a new coat of paint and everyone was in high spirits.

After completing our first task of the day, our group also had to work on practicing one of our key MAB principles: being gumby. This morning after we had already parked our cars in our service location's parking lot, we noticed that our carefully packed lunches were still happily perched on our kitchen counters. We took the misfortune in stride and decided to take a quick trip downtown to support the local economy. After hearing recommendations from the staff, Al's Red Barn Grill was the lucky winner (S/O Monica). We all enjoyed the likes of burgers, "wet" burritos (idk what that really means), quesadillas, and fried mac-n-cheese bites. It was delicious!

When we arrived back at the sanctuary after lunch, our group was split in two: one group headed on to paint 'Kylie's' island building and the other half worked on enrichment and nourishment activities. These activities would range from spreading honey over pages of magazines, slicing limes to be hidden throughout the chimp's islands, and stuffing craisin's into holes in bricks, which created a fun little puzzle for the chimps with the reward of success being a tasty snack.


While working on our respective service tasks, we were still able to find time to fit in some fun. This fun, of course, was centered around the chimps. Some of this was planned, such as our time spent with Clay, one of our favorite chimps. We helped Clay get his daily exercise in through games like tug-of-war (we didn't win) and a bit of racing back and forth outside of his enclosure. We also had some more personal contact with him in the forms of touching with a 'tickle stick', which is a three foot section of rubber hose that allows human and chimp to interact without violating the strict no-touch policy on the sanctuary, and by exchanging funny faces. The other half of the group got to have some different experiences, such as discovering the range a chimp has with a full mouth of water (it's far, and he came back repeatedly, which made painting next to the enclosures quite difficult) and seeing how the chimps are fed, thanks to the gracious keeper of 'Kylie's' island, Greg (Greg's a human if that wasn't clear). Also, as a full group, we got the rare experience of getting to actually go out on one of the chimp family's island. The chimps were all in their respective indoor enclosures in order to be fed, and we leaped at the opportunity to get to experience the sanctuary as the chimps do. Topped off by a two second chimp impersonation by Anna, one of our fearless site leaders, and the fantastic views from the top of the hilly island, it was quite the experience.

At 4 o'clock, we headed to Jimmy and Billy (Jimmy and Billy are not chimps or humans, Jimmy and Billy are cars) and drove east to the ocean to do a little sight seeing. We stopped by Fort Pierce's Manatee Center and caught a glimpse of a sleepy manatee, and then decided we might as well work on another principle: this is it. When one is five minutes from the beach, one does not just simply not go to the beach.


What started with just a couple pictures quickly escalated to people sprinting into the ocean, and we returned to Jimmy and Billy wet, sandy, and in the need of a shower. We finally reached home base, and were thankfully greeted with the news that we would not be heading back north soon due to weather concerns, but instead would be staying an extra day! This was definitely a big stress reliever for all of us and we finished the night with some tasty stir fry and a couple card games.

We can all agree that our third day of service was extremely eventful and we can't wait to see what's in store for the second half of the week!

- Fort Pierce Crew -