Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Many thanks to Keith Dawson for kindly choosing to celebrate his own special day by making a difference for the chimpanzees and sponsoring this day of sanctuary!
Happy Birthday, Keith! We hope it’s the best one yet! May it be full of whole heads of lettuce and coconuts (or your equivalent). 🙂
Burrito:
Gordo:
Missy:
Annie:
Here’s another chimp ID from The Lucky Six. Gordo! We are still learning so much about this group every day, but one thing we learned right away about Gordo is that he is a foodie! He’s always ready for meal times. I think he could eat his serving plus everyone else’s and still want more! That’s okay though, I can relate. Gordo seems to enjoy the food puzzles we give them for enrichment. I usually see him interacting with them, especially the raisin boards.
Gordo plays chase with us every so often, but for the most part he seems to prefer to lay back and watch the happenings of the day.
He is the smallest male in his group. Gordo has a slim body type, but still is pretty large compared to Burrito!
Gordo loves boxes! We reuse the boxes our produce comes in by giving them to the chimps and he can usually be found sitting in one.
Gordo has a very white beard with a lot of tan coloring around his bottom lip and a little bit above his upper lip. He has a pretty narrow face.
Today Gordo took his lunch carrots and enjoyed them in the Chute. We gave them access to this space a couple weeks ago and Gordo along with the rest of his group have been spending a lot of time out there.
1) HOOT! online bidding opened today. More items will be added throughout the week before the event, which will stream live one week from today, Saturday, September 18th at 6:00pm PT on Facebook and YouTube. Learn more and see the current auction items available for bidding now on the HOOT! auction site.
2) The Lucky Six aired two nights ago on NBC7 San Diego’s Down to Earth with Dagmar, and you can watch it online now! It’s in four parts, so be sure to watch each of the four videos in sequence.
3) You saw the video celebration of Annie’s birthday yesterday, and now you can see these bonus photos of Annie and others in her group thoroughly enjoying the celebration. It was raining during the forage, but, as J.B. said yesterday, that did not slow them down a bit (well, maybe Negra, who decided to find food under the cover of the greenhouse).
Annie:
Missy, who enjoyed the kale as much as the coconuts:
Foxie:
Burrito, in sequence:
Negra on her throne:
Neither rain nor a brazen coconut theft could keep us from celebrating Annie’s 47th birthday. Happy Birthday to one of the sweetest chimpanzees in the world!
It’s Annie’s birthday! And the lovely fairy godmother of chimpanzee birthdays, Paulette Wrisley, has graciously sponsored this day of sanctuary in celebration of Annie on her special day!
Paulette, thank you so very much for helping us celebrate dear, beloved Annie! You just lift all our hearts with your kindness!
Classic Annie and Missy:
If you’ve been following us for while you probably already know many of Annie’s endearing qualities. In short, Annie is a delight! She’s beautiful, kind, loves endless games of chase and wrestle with her best friend, Missy, likes to wear fashionable headbands around her waist in the springtime, fills the chimp house with “bird noises” by whistling with her mouth and hands when she is particularly relaxed and content, and is our resident snake alarm, letting all the world know the instant she sees a snake near the chimpanzees’ enclosures.
Annie is turning 47! While we don’t know her exact date of birth, we know she was born in 1974, most likely in Africa. Since the arrival of Annie’s group to the sanctuary over 13 years ago, it’s Annie who has probably changed the most. She tends to be so inextricably linked with her best friend, Missy, that “AnnieMissy” is often considered one word here at the sanctuary. Yet with each passing year, she has become increasingly brave, adventurous, curious, creative and independent in her own right. Not to mention, filled with moxie. Yeah, that last bit gets her into a little trouble at times, but we can’t help but secretly love it all the same.
These days Annie seems to embrace the peace she finds in solitude and solo adventures. It’s not uncommon to find everyone inside except Annie, who might then be found at the top of Young’s Hill, at the top of a structure, all on her own, serenely taking in the view. Or curled up in a nest of blankets at the top of the greenhouse on warm summer nights as she looks out over the hill, falling asleep as the sun sets while everyone is tucked into their night nests indoors. In fact, some of my most cherished of summer moments are when I’m able to tiptoe out to the greenhouse after the chimp house is settled for the night, just before I leave, to see if she’s out there and whisper goodnight to her. It’s really not in the saying goodnight that I cherish, but in the seeing her there, content, at ease, in her own little world of wonder.
These may not sound like big deals, but for someone who has overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds she has, these moments that she now gets to choose are life-changing. And while we can only imagine just how much, our hearts sing and soar along with her.
Happiest of birthdays and fullest of hearts, Annie!! You are so cherished!
Be sure to tune back in later today for the party happenings! You never know what the chimps will get up to and we’ve got a box of fresh coconuts with Miss Annie’s name on it. 🙂
Yesterday I watched Cy’s group put on a dramatic display around their playroom just before lunch. This isn’t unusual, as chimps do daily dominance displays. What I found amusing about this particular show of passion, was that in the middle of all the chaos, plastic barrels getting thrown around the enclosure and pant hoots echoing off the wall, sat Cy. He was completely calm and absolutely enthralled with his latest magazine. The same thing happened this morning as most of the chimps investigated a food puzzle. As you will see in the video, Cy had better ideas.
I had this blog written around 1 pm. It was intended to be all about Neggie, but then we did an intro with Honey B and Terry today. Honey B and Terry’s first introduction didn’t go as we had hoped. Since then we have had them meet at the mesh a few times. Yesterday they met again at the mesh and it went really well, they were playing and laughing. We were so close to opening the door, however we humans were not quite ready yet. So today we decided if it went as well as yesterday we would open the door. Today we opened the door after letting them hangout at the mesh for a while and they did SO well! As you will see in the video, they are laughing, wrestling, and grooming. These behaviors give us hope that they have potential to integrate into a group of 9. Now, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Dyadic meeting can go really well, but once you had more chimps, it changes the dynamic of the group. But for now this was a HUGE success!
Since I teased you with an almost Neggie blog I might as well share it! This morning, as Missy’s group went onto Young’s Hill, I saw the usual people go outside. Missy sprinting out first, of course. Foxie, Jody, Annie, and Bubba formed a line and all marched out together. Jamie sauntered out on her own, but when I turned around to look at Negra in her usual nesting spot, she wasn’t there. Instead she was sitting on the Hill soaking in the warm sunshine and eating some delicious grass.
