Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for March 2015

Today is in honor of “Team Humphreys”

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Today’s day of sanctuary was sponsored by Jennifer Humphreys in honor of her family, “Team Humphreys.” Jennifer is a former volunteer of ours and helped us and the chimpanzees out a lot while she was here attending Central Washington University. She shared that she wants to sponsor this day as a gift for both the chimps and her dad, Jan, her mother, Carol, and her siblings, Kelli, Elizabeth, Heather, Geoff, Greg, Brian, and Kyle. Today also happens to be her mother’s birthday!

Jennifer, thank you so much for thinking of the chimpanzees and continuing to make a difference in their lives in honoring your family today!

bunch of chimps on a structure

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And Carol, we hope you have the happiest of birthdays surrounded by loved ones and doing all the things you most enjoy!

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Time, Energy and Thought

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A lot of time, energy and thought go into building and maintaining friendships. Usually, there is an undeniable connection when first meeting one another; a sort of intrigue about what the other is all about. As time goes on and more energy is put into the relationship, more and more details of each individual are realized and a deeper connection forms. And the bond grows stronger, as one another figures out what makes the other tick. These lasting friendships help shape our lives.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be able to build friendships with the Cle Elum 7. Some of the friendships are low key, like with Annie, Jody, and Negra. Usually a morning greeting (consisting mostly of some head nodding and an arm extended toward the chimps) will suffice. One friendship demands more play time than the others, including chase and tug-of-war. This is often the case with Burrito. Foxie expects me to take care of her troll and dora dolls when she passes them through the cage to me. There is also the expectation that I will pass them back to her too. Quiet grooming sessions with Missy help maintain our friendship. Without a doubt, there is one friendship that takes the most time, effort and thought. Jamie demands me to be her friend; demands me to put on that boot (or boots) and take countless walks around Young’s Hill with her. She also demands that I sit with her afterwards with the boot so she can groom it.

As a caregiver, I want what is best for each of these chimpanzees. I don’t mind the expectations, demands or work that these friendships take. I truly love to see them happy and I want what is best for them, as I would for any friend. Just a few days ago, I couldn’t help but notice the sweet smell of violets in the air as I was working in my yard. Instantly, the chimpanzees popped into my head; flowers are great enrichment for them. These chimpanzees like to eat lilacs, nasturtiums, grape leaves and violets to name a few. So, I picked what violet flowers we had and put them out as part of a forage this morning along with lettuce and today’s enrichment, which was enrichment-in-boxes day. Thinking that the flowers are the first flowers of the season, I thought the chimps would be excited.

I guess I was right, if you count them eating all of the lettuce first, followed by going through all of the boxes of enrichment, then going out into the greenhouse and then spending time on Young’s Hill before coming back in to snack on a few flowers. At least they liked two out of the three!

Here’s a photo of the lettuce and violet forage.

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Negra was most interested in the lettuce, while Annie checked out the contents of the box.

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Missy was more interested in the contents of the boxes of enrichment than anything else.

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Can you spot the flying sock?

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And Jamie was most interested in the boxes themselves.

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Annie was content to sit on the floor and drink from the fountain after checking out a few of the boxes.

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I’m forever grateful to call these chimpanzees my friends.

A Well-Earned Rest

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For the first time in their lives, the Cle Elum Seven live in a place where the humans do all the work, while they spend their days however they please. Nothing is expected of them other than to be chimps. Occasionally the chimps enjoy watching us while we work, but the majority of the time they’re off doing their own thing, and are supremely unconcerned with our aching muscles and tired minds. Exactly as it should be.

Today volunteer caregiver Becca delivered about a dozen boxes of donated produce (courtesy of the generous folks at Darwin’s Natural Pet Products) from Seattle. Becca and staff caregiver Keri went to work processing the produce right away.

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Meanwhile, the chimpanzees were doing what they do best.

Negra:

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Annie:

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Jody:

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Foxie:

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Content Jamie

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Today is a gorgeous spring day with clear skies, the temperature is in the mid-60s, and everyone is in a great mood. It seemed like a great day for a picnic, so we set up a forage outside and everyone—including fair-weather gal Negra—ventured out for their lunch.

When they’re not outside, the chimps have been relaxing in the greenhouse mostly, but Jamie popped into the front rooms to get a good look out the window to see what JB and Diana’s dogs were up to (they’re enjoying the weather, too!)

I was able to take some photos of the boss in this calm moment. She was happy to let me do so, as long as I promised to show her the photos afterwards. She watched as I flipped through the photos on the camera screen—I took a couple dozen, at least! Once she was satisfied she returned to the greenhouse.

These are the best photos out of the bunch that I took:

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Is Happiness the Goal?

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Today I was in the human part of the greenhouse after walking around the hill with Jamie, and I noticed that all seven of the chimpanzees were taking advantage of the warm greenhouse on this, dare I say, almost summer-like day.

Watching the chimpanzees each doing there own thing made me think about a Freaknomics podcast that J.B. and I listened to part of last night. It was a series of short narratives taken from the Edge.org book This Idea Must Die.

Before I delve much further into my thought process – two things:

first – you should definitely listen to this podcast if the title intrigues you. I was particularly impressed with the speech by Azra Raza, an oncologist and professor of medicine at Columbia who eloquently argued that the idea of using mice to serve as stand-ins for humans in cancer research is inhibiting progress in finding treatments and cures for human cancers.

and second – if you’re just here for a feel-good blog post and not really up for thinking about what the heck happiness really is – just skip ahead to watch the video of Missy and Annie playing and the photos that follow of what the other chimpanzees were doing in that brief space of time in the greenhouse (I really won’t be offended).

The portion of the podcast that talked briefly about happiness was from Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale. His submission for an idea that needs to retire is that we as a society can figure out how to live better lives through scientifically studying happiness (this is my paraphrasing).

Where my mind went with this was this: perhaps the concept of happiness being the ultimate goal is the idea that needs to retire. Part of what Dr. Bloom expressed is that it’s pretty hard to define what it means to have a happy life.

And here’s where I tie this all in to seeing the chimps in the greenhouse today. If you think of happiness as blissfulness, or elation, or joy, that is what Annie and Missy may have been experiencing in this video:

It seems obvious that, as a sanctuary, we would want to create more moments like what Annie and Missy were experiencing.

But what were the other chimps doing while those two were wrestling?

Negra, as you probably saw in the video, was simply watching Missy and Annie play while lying on the deck of the greenhouse:

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Negra close-up

 

Jody was lying on her back, self-grooming nearby

Jody happy baby pose

 

Foxie and Burrito were in the corner of the greenhouse involved in an intense pair-grooming session

Foxie grooming Burrito

 

Jamie and I had just gotten back from a walk

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and she was patiently waiting to groom the cowboy boots that I was wearing as I was taking photos of everyone else

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I could probably describe all of the chimpanzees in those moments as happy, but there was so much more to what they were doing, and, unlike our human cultural obsession with seeking happiness, the chimps were just being.

And I think that’s what sanctuary is about – the space to just be. To allow the chimpanzees to figure out what it is they, as individuals, want to do in a given moment, and to be able to do it. And sometimes, like when Burrito gets brave and decides to join in a walk around the hill, it’s not all about happiness – there might even be some challenge to the task, whether that’s overcoming fears or a physical challenge.

I do hope that the years at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest add up to a whole lot of happiness, but I hope too that there are many other experiences that we can provide, and that these experiences allow the chimpanzees to be more fully themselves, whether that’s “happiness” or something else of their own making.

She’s back…….

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Cle Elum’s favorite elk is on the move again.

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Ellie, as we have named her (others in town also know her as “Button”), is a wild elk that was separated from her herd at a young age. She found a safe haven in the pasture of a nearby ranch, where she helped herself to the hay set out for the horses and cattle throughout the winter. She’s free to come as go as she pleases, since elk can easily jump the fences typically used to contain farm animals. In the warmer months, when food is plentiful, she wanders the Bristol Flats canyon and the side of Lookout Mountain, and because spring came early to the Northwest this year, she decided to venture over to the sanctuary this week for a visit.

She likes to stop by the sanctuary office to check up on us and the cats:

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She also seems to enjoy teasing our dogs. They’ve never met an animal so unmoved by their barking and growling. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

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She greets all visitors to the sanctuary, including unsuspecting repairmen.

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Seeing Ellie is always bittersweet. We’d love to see her rejoin a wild herd, but in the few times they have come back through the canyon, she has either declined to join them or was not accepted. In many ways, she probably has the same kind of identity confusion that we see in cross-fostered chimpanzees (chimps that were raised as if they were human). Perhaps she even sees herself as more cow or horse than elk.

But she certainly enriches the lives of the chimps. When they first saw her two years ago, they tried to scare her away from Young’s Hill. But unlike our dogs, they eventually realized that she wasn’t going anywhere, and now they greet her more with interest than with fear or territoriality.

Sandra, a Level 3 volunteer, was walking around the hill with Jamie yesterday when Ellie decided to make an appearance. She and Debbie put together this video:

More of Annie’s bird noises

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Debbie recently posted a short video clip of Annie’s bird noises, but we haven’t had much luck capturing this endearing Annie-ism on film for more than a few seconds here and there.

Annie typically makes her bird noises when she’s feeling content and relaxed, usually lying on her back like in this video from this afternoon: