You’ve probably already heard about the new house, which is a wonderful home for the growing family that is the young chimps. However, like all new houses, there are a few problems to work out.  One of these is the plumbing. The chimps need constant water supply; which they get from troughs; which are filled by pipes leading from taps outside the enclosure. Recently, one of the pipes sprung a leak and whenever the tap was turned on a muddy puddle would slowly appear on the ground.  Jane and Akela were very curious about this mystery mud, and started digging the ground with a stick to discover the source.  Soon they had uncovered the leaky pipe, and then there was no stopping them!  

Jane and Akela spent most of the morning digging up the plastic pipe, assisted by Dufatanye and Bahati, despite our best efforts to distract them.  After they had unearthed most of the pipe all the other chimps got curious about what this strange thing in the ground was and joined them in bending and twisting it.  It wasn’t long until the pipe was in pieces and a long trench filled the space between the water trough and the fence.  

The long pieces of pipe proved to be great toys for the afternoon and were excellent excavation tools for digging further to see if other “fun things” showed up. The interesting thing is that both Jane and Akela like to keep themselves clean – throughout the whole pipe excavation process, they frequently returned to the water trough to wash the mud off their hands. Unfortunately, until the pipe is replaced it will be a bit harder for them to keep clean.  Hopefully, next time they don’t try to fix the plumbing for us!

By guest blogger, Nicole Sharpe.