Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Today is Rena Schwartz’s birthday and Melissa Pendleton has sponsored the day in celebration. Sponsoring a day of care for the chimpanzees in a friend’s or loved one’s name is such a thoughtful way to spread the love. Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, Negra, and all of their humans at CSNW wish you the happiest of birthdays, Rena!
Here’s Jamie checking out a gift bag at one of Foxie’s birthday parties:
The chimps are lucky to have a huge crew of fans, supporters and volunteers as part of their family. I’m always blown away by the generosity of time, sweat, and emotion that our volunteers display. It’s hard work. Today volunteer Seana went above (literally) and beyond by chasing Jamie around the Hill. Twice. That is one impressive workout. If you’re somewhat local (meaning you can commit to coming out to the sanctuary at least once a month), you too might be able to join the team. Learn more about our volunteer program here.
Around the top:
Down the side:
Chilling out with Burrito after all that exercise:
Foxie is the peacekeeper of the Cle Elum Seven. She often goes out of her way during conflicts to try to calm everyone down. Yesterday Jamie seemed to be feeling a little cranky and restless, and Foxie cheered her up by initiating a wrestling game.
As many of you probably already know, Negra hasn’t been going out on Young’s Hill much since last fall. Obviously, we cannot ever truly get inside of the chimps’ heads, and I’m sure Negra’s lack of interest in the hill is due to many different factors. I imagine 35 years in a small laboratory cage would make 2 acres seem extremely intimidating (it is intimidating!) plus we know she isn’t much of a fan of cold weather, so lately she has preferred to hang out in front of the chimp-proof glass windows in the Playroom with a blanket over her head (who can blame her when it’s that cold really?). But with the warmer weather and the vibrant fresh grass, she’s found just enough motivation to get herself out there, even if just for a minute.
Negra in her transfer cage en route to CSNW in 2008:
Negra today:
In celebration of reaching our goal of 5,000 “likes” (fans) on the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest Facebook page (an increase of over 300 since yesterday!), we threw a Cinco Mil de Mayo party for brunch this morning.
On the menu was guacamole in lettuce with tomatoes and a side of watermelon, accompanied by sparkling seltzer water with lime wedges:
And what’s Cinco de Mayo without a pinata?
Negra loves both avocados and lettuce, so she was very pleased with the party menu:
Missy also really enjoyed the lettuce guacamole wraps. She had a technique of licking the guacamole off first, then eating the lettuce:
Jamie enjoyed the refreshing sparkling water, served in plastic shot glasses:
Burrito‘s strategy was to gather as many pieces of primate chow as quickly as he could:
Annie also enjoyed the chow, though in a slower fashion:
Guess who got the pinata? Yes, indeed – the leader of the group, Jamie, claimed it as her own:
She must have left some nuts inside, though, because Negra was eating a walnut later in the party:
It was a pretty windy day, but Foxie took some time to explore on Young’s Hill with Dora:
Negra decided the party was not complete without fresh grass from the hill, so she went out and helped herself:
For dinner, J.B. served the chimps baked sweet potatoes, corn, and celery. Here he is serving celery to Jody:
Of course, dinner was capped off with the traditional Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest night bag of seeds, popcorn, nuts and dried fruit. Jody lied down to eat hers:
Thanks and happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone who liked the FB page for the first time yesterday and for those friends who recruited new fans of the Cle Elum Seven! Please explore the blog and the rest of the website to learn more about your new friends! And if you’re local, join us on May 20th in Ellensburg for Race for the Apes – our first 5K run / walk fundraiser.
We’re so excited to finally be able to share the “chimp cam” videos with everyone and we’re grateful to King 5 News for introducing the chimps to some new people.
Many of you had questions about the new camera, so we put together this video (with some new footage of the chimps!) to show you how it was made. We were able to purchase the camera thanks to a fundraising drive launched by our wonderful blog readers, and volunteers Jakob, Jessy, Rachel, Adrienne, and Janna helped us install the cameras on Young’s Hill.
Unfortunately, the camera won’t allow us to stream live video on the internet. We are still limited by our poor internet connection (that’s life in the country) and, with the size of our enclosures, you wouldn’t see the chimps very often unless we had a lot of cameras (unlike the popular bird’s nest cameras). But we’re always looking for new ways to share the chimps’ lives with you, so we hope to have some more surprises in the future.
The sanctuary is less than 300 fans away from reaching 5,000 “likes” on our Facebook page, so I thought we should try to reach 5,000 today, and we can throw a Cinco (Mil) de Mayo party for the chimps tomorrow!
It’s an ambitious goal for one day, so we really need everyone’s help to spread the word. Tell all of your friends on Facebook to like the CSNW page, and, even if you’re not on Facebook, send an email out to your friends who are and let them know we want them to like our page today. You can send them a link to the full “chimp cam” video that King 5 previewed yesterday to win them over: http://youtu.be/u4i0HhwWKls.
As a bonus, J.B. is going to be posting a video on the Facebook page that he caught on his phone just now of Negra sneaking onto the hill and getting grass, so if you’re a fan of the Cle Elum Seven and not a fan on Facebook, today is your day to rectify that situation!
Here’s what our Facebook cover currently looks like – Jody peacefully sleeping in the sandbox:
