It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the sky?

For Vanilla the chimpanzee, who spent the vast majority of her 28 years in captivity, the sight of the sky is just as amazing as any flying object, as shown by a clip depicting her first time ever looking up. 

After jumping out of her enclosure and into her primate pal Dwight’s arms at the Save the Chimps sanctuary located in Fort Pierce, Florida, Vanilla, who was once held at the notorious, now-closed Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates can be seen looking upwards, her jaw-dropping in awe of the sight before her.

Yet her big grin wasn’t just for show. According to primatologist Dr. Andrew Halloran, “Vanilla is settling in very well” to her new environment.  

“In California, Vanilla lived with a handful of chimps inside a chain-link fence cage with no grass and very little enrichment,” explained primatologist Dr. Andrew Halloran, who first showed the clip of the chimpanzee soaking up the sun at the American Society of Primatologists in Reno, Nevada last week, per New York Post.

“When she’s not exploring the island with her friends, she can usually be found perched atop a three-story climbing platform surveying her new world,” he later elaborated of her new Floridian home.

Here’s to Vanilla – it’s never to late to find the joys in life.