Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for April 2018

Rainy day puzzles

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A rainy day like today seemed like a good time to introduce the chimps to a new enrichment food puzzle. Before we fully integrate a puzzle into the chimps’ enrichment schedule, we often do a trial run where we try and gauge the chimps’ level of interest in the puzzle, as well as how difficult it is for them to complete. We ultimately want the puzzle to be really time consuming for them (to keep their minds and bodies busy), but not so much that they give up and stop trying. Today we put out a few bath towel knots that had walnuts tied into them. To really make the puzzle challenging, the towels were dipped in water and frozen prior to the chimps receiving them. All throughout the rest of our cleaning this morning, we heard the thumping sounds of the chimps working on their puzzles in the loft of the playroom. I think we can consider this trial run a success, minus the fact that I didn’t manage to get any photos to document the event. Once we get photos, we will add these Frozen Towel Knots to the Enrichment Database on our website. If you haven’t checked out the new look of the database on our beautifully redone website, I highly recommend it!

Because no blog is complete without photos, here is a selection from the vault:

Burrito:

Jody:

Negra:

In Celebration of Lisa Stuverud and Linda Vizzare

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Supporter Lisa Stuverud is celebrating a birthday today, and her husband Richard sponsored today’s day of sanctuary with this note:

Sending a “little something” for the chimps in honor of Lisa’s birthday. With every blog post we get a “whole lotta something” in return…so much love, joy and good feelings ! Thank you so much for all you do!!

Lisa and Richard are the kind of people that are often thinking of ways to bring joy to others. They’ve brought a lot of joy to the chimpanzees over the years through their support and goodwill.

Today is no exception. Lisa also sponsored the day in memory of Linda Vizzare with this heartfelt and heartwarming message:

Another year gone by without my sister-in-law Linda. She is never far from thought but especially on April 4th when I get to celebrate us on our shared birthday. Linda loved Burrito and his happy dance. We often talked about the chimps and their strength and resilience during her chemo sessions. You just never know where inspiration comes from to get through difficult times. As Burrito, Jamie, Foxie, Jody, Annie, Missy, Negra, the sanctuary and everyone connected to it continue to daily offer strength, resilience, inspiration and much joy they also keep me close to my sister-in-law who every day just hoped for 1000 more days.

There are so many gifts that this job provides, and one of the most significant gifts is being able to honor others. So thank you, Richard and Lisa, for giving us this gift.

Burrito is certainly not one to hide his joy. Here he is in mid-dance:

 

and here he is really excited about something:

 

and here he is just hanging out with his pal Foxie while eating some corn:

Friends make everything more enjoyable. ❤

A burst of happiness

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When some of the chimps are feeling a bit silly and relaxed, they have this little routine they do where they lay on their back and flail their arms and legs in the air and side to side for a few seconds. It’s sort of like a shiver of joy, contentment and energy runs through them.
Here’s Foxie’s upside down moment she had this morning on Young’s Hill:

With that out of her system, Foxie and Dora continued their day together:

Thank you, Jessica and Dan!

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Daniel and Jessica D’Eramo-Parry sponsored this day of sanctuary in celebration of love, family and the chimps, really. Jessica shared this lovely message about today:

“Dan and I started dating on this date 14 years ago. We want to celebrate this year by thinking of the chimps. We were planning to visit the sanctuary this past fall, and were so sad to have to cancel our trip. I will be so excited to meet them one day.”

Congratulations, Jessica and Dan! Thanks so very much for celebrating your lives together by sharing that love with the chimpanzees! This is such a lovely thing to do! Thank you for being part of the chimps’ family. J.B. & Diana wish you a happy anniversary!

 

Here’s a bit of a flashback – Dan took this photo in 2008. As you can see, this was long before Young’s Hill existed and before the original “outdoor area” was made into a greenhouse!