Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Today is our 9th annual Love a Chimpanzee Day! This holiday was born in the imagination of one of the chimps’ longtime friends, but that doesn’t make it any less real to us.
This year we decided to celebrate by offering each of the chimpanzees something they love.
It’s that time of year again! It’s Love a Chimpanzee Day! As a way to celebrate how amazing chimpanzee people are (and her own special day!), our incredible friend, Monica Best, has designated this official “Love a Chimpanzee Day” and sponsors this day of sanctuary each year!
Monica, thank you so much for every single thing that you do to make sure the chimpanzees lives are filled with all the joy and hope possible. We’re so lucky to have you in our chimp family! You’re a light in the world for so many animals and an inspiration to so many humans. We all hope you have as beautiful a day as you help make possible for so many beings.
We also received an additional gift donation in honor of Monica from her mother, Linda Miller, with this sweet note:
“In honor of my wonderful daughter, Monica Best, as she sponsors her special birthday day on April 23rd.”
Thank you, Linda, for making certain that Monica is celebrated on this day as well! We truly appreciate the love you both bring to the chimps’ lives for all of us to share in.
Happy Love a Chimpanzee Day, everyone! The chimps are going to be enjoying a day of each of their favorite foods and as always, surrounded by so much love, thanks to all of you.
Negra:
Annie:
Burrito:
Foxie:
Jody:
Jamie:
Missy:
The day after a party means different things for different people. For the chimpanzees, it means continuing to enjoy any leftover treats, especially anything that may have been missed during a Young’s Hill forage, and general lolling about to rest and recover.
Even Negra went out first thing to look for leftovers from the Easter bunny:
Annie and Foxie:
Missy:
For the humans, the day after a party means party clean-up! Also for the chimpanzees, it means the humans not bothering them with cleaning details. So you may see the dilemma. For the humans, not the chimps. 😉 Case in point, we have been attempting to access and clean the party room, aka the greenhouse, all weekend. Multiple times a day we’ve offered the chimps all manner of exciting opportunities to vacate the greenhouse and enjoy a forage, a treat, a piece of gum in the playroom. Every single time there has been a lot of running back and forth, in and out, and then just as you think everyone has agreed to come inside for a few minutes, there is one person holding steadfast in their choice to decline the humans’ invitation.
Which lately has been this tiny lady:
Along with the support of her good friend, Jody:
I’m not going to lie. We pulled out all the stops. Despite an exciting forage going on in the playroom, here Foxie sat with her dolls in the toasty hot, after-party mess of a greenhouse. I offered, “Chow (a Foxie favorite!!)?” “No, thank you.”….”Half a banana?” “No thank you.” It was then that I got it. If she was turning down some of her favorites, she was truly content exactly where she was. And it no longer became important to try and get in to clean at that time. There’s always after dinner…maybe.
In the end, I fully appreciate that the chimpanzees get this agency over their lives, to choose when and where they want to move to and what they want to participate in. The joy they receive from enrichment such as parties and the pleasure that lingers afterward, or just the contentment that comes with relaxing in a warm greenhouse on a sunny spring day makes any effort on our parts more than worth the effort. And who knows, maybe they are just doing a little “caregiver enrichment” in making us think a little more creatively, outside the box. 😉
And a bonus photo! One of our fabulous volunteers took the unbelievable time and care to make the amazing Easter baskets the chimps had yesterday. Burrito found them to be useful for all manner of shenanigans:
And oh! A bonus bonus photo! We DID make it to the greenhouse to clean while the chimps enjoyed an extra exciting dinner forage and grab bags for enrichment. Jamie was late to dinner when I noticed her searching for some reading material. A food magazine. Which she carried through dinner. The chimps are all curled into their night nests as I write this and I just glanced through the window, surprised to see busy boss lady, Jamie, who is usually still up when we leave for the night, already at rest for the evening. And then I noticed her reading material. She is a surprise and a delight every.single.day.
I don’t know about you guys, but Easter morning in my house was the best! Scouring the inside and outside of the house for Easter eggs before your brother or sister got to them, looking through an Easter basket, and eating those eggs you worked so hard dyeing! So, this morning the first thing the chimps got to do was have an Easter egg hunt! A lot of work goes into our parties for the chimps. We at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are lucky enough to have so many amazing volunteers. They are SO awesome that, as some of you might have seen on Facebook, one of our volunteers made the chimps’ Easter baskets by hand!
Our volunteers are a major reason why parties go so smoothly. They help prep days before and the day of, and help us clean the day after.
Volunteer Miranda hiding Easter eggs out on Young’s Hill:
Volunteer Alan planting carrots in the ground for the Easter forage:
Before the festivities could start we needed to give out some routine things like vitamins, smoothie, and meds. Volunteer Lizz also got to serve a tasty surprise for the chimps. The chimps got to have hard boiled eggs! The eggs came from staff caregiver Anna’s happy pet chickens . They don’t get them that often, but when they do, they love them!
It was really hard to decide what photos to choose for the blog today. There were so many good ones, I hope you all enjoy our Easter party!
Annie:
Burrito:
Foxie and her doll:
Missy:
Negra:
Jamie:
Searching for eggs:
But Jody really won this Easter egg hunt. She made out with a lot of loot and I never saw Jody without one of those baskets in her hands either!
I am pretty sure today is the warmest we’ve had yet this spring! The chimps have been assuming their good ol’ summertime positions in the greenhouse, stretched out, legs in the air, baking in the yet unaccustomed to “heat”. There has been time spent outside among the greening of the hill and time spent inside napping in the warm afternoon. Jamie in particular spent a lot of time having one of her treasured caregivers look through her books with her and brush her hair while she dozed. It was pretty endearing to say the least.
After lunch she grabbed her beloved boot pillow and books and eventually fell sound, sound asleep.
Today’s choice of reading material was a new bird book, a vegetarian cookbook and cooking magazines:
Holding her foot:
The season of grass snacking has begun! Yesterday afternoon, Elizabeth and I caught Negra sitting on the Young’s Hill picking handful after handful. It’s a little early for the full bounty of wild plants to appear, so we still get to look forward to the time when we find her further up the hill, picking mouthfuls of prickly lettuce. This morning the Queen wandered outside, just so she could take in the view from her usual outdoor platform. We can’t get enough!
For Jody, sanctuary means having the freedom to eat lunch in bed whenever you choose.
