Archives for February 21, 2014

This morning, we awoke to another power outage – the fourth one this winter.

Losing power is never fun when you’re caring for chimps. In the winter, we have to set up a portable generator outside and connect it to a backup heater to keep the chimp house warm. In the summer, we risk losing hundreds of dollars worth of produce if we can’t keep our refrigerators running. And after the Taylor Bridge Fire, when we had no power for days, we were left with no lights, no laundry, no computers, and worst of all, a struggle to keep essential phones and radios charged during an emergency.

I’m happy to say that this morning was probably the last time we’ll ever have to deal with the effects a power outage. Thanks to a grant from the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) Sanctuary Fund and a generous donation from supporters Karen and Don Young, we will soon be installing a 20-kilowatt standby generator. This generator will come on automatically within seconds anytime the power goes out and will run everything in the chimp house: heat, lights, chimp doors, refrigerators, and the electric fences.

Sometimes I wish the chimps could see all the things that people and organizations from all over the world do to help care for them. But in this case, the whole point of the gift is that they won’t ever know anything was wrong in the first place. And that means Negra won’t have to lose a single minute of sleep over it.

So our sincere thanks go out to NAVS, and to Karen and Don, for giving our staff some peace of mind, and for giving Negra some peace and quiet.