Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for February 2023

Happy Birthday, Wanda!

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Heartfelt thanks to Wanda Bryan Culbreth for so graciously sponsoring a day of sanctuary as a way to celebrate her own special day!

“For my 50th birthday, February 16, 2023, I would like to sponsor a day to take care of the 16 chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.”

Happy Birthday, Wanda! We all hope you have the most beautiful day and the best birthday yet! Thank you so much for making a difference in the chimpanzees’ lives and helping to provide them with a wonderful home.

Maybe the chimpanzees can share some ideas of how to celebrate not only today, but every day. Declare yourself Queen for a day (or forever), hug a friend, lounge (in a turtle pool if you’re so lucky to have one), tickle/poke somebody (the chimps do it!), eat (or smell) some flowers, wear the latest spring fashions and be the envy of all your friends, climb a tree, take in a view. The possibilities are endless really. 🙂

Honey B hugging Dora:

Jody:

Mave:

Terry:

Foxie, Annie, Missy:

Keep the Love Going: Fall in Love with Terry!

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Valentine’s Day might be over (you can check out that fabulous party here), but we’re here to keep the love going!

On our webpage for each chimpanzee, we have a personalized Fall in Love video. These are precious snip-bits into who they are- favorite hobbies, what foods they like, etc. While they are educational, they also are really good at making you fall in love over and over… and over again. So, in honor of Valentine’s Day, we are excited to finally release the Fall in Love videos of Cy’s original group of six- the “Lucky Six”! Starting today and over the next five days, the blog will feature these videos of Terry, Cy, Gordo, Lucky, Rayne, and Dora. And, boy, are they lovable!

Sometimes I forget how much has changed for this original group of six over the last few years. After Wildlife Waystation closed in 2019, the Chimpanzees In Need campaign worked to re-home the chimpanzees that lived at Waystation (click here to learn more and donate to their care). The “Lucky Six” were the second group of Waystation chimps that found their permanent home here at CSNW in June of 2021, with Willy B, Honey B, and Mave arriving in the fall of 2019. The two groups have since been integrated and now live in a group of nine.

So, over the last few years, these six chimps have found themselves in a new home, in a new state, with new humans, and also developed relationships with three other chimps that have made it possible for them to live in a larger group of nine. As someone who gets thrown off for the day if my coffee machine malfunctions in the morning, I can’t express how impressed & proud I am of them. And, generally, just how much I adore these nine chimps. And also their neighbors, of course. 🙂

All this to say that, now, a year and a half later, we have watched the original “Lucky Six” come out of their shells and really let their personalities shine. Creating these videos has been a lot of fun and I hope you fall in love with them as much as we have (if you haven’t already)!

First up on the docket is Terry (AKA Sir Terrance, Teeny Tiny Terry, and/or T-Dawg). Born on June 13, 1990 at a biomedical research laboratory, we are so grateful that he now calls CSNW home. Check out the video for more on this lovable goof.

We’ll be uploading this video to Terry’s Bio Page once all the videos have been featured, but if you’re interested in sponsoring Terry you can become his Chimpanzee Pal today!

Between Love and War: Valentine’s Day 2023

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Valentine’s is a day meant to be spent with loved ones and show affection to them. But as you know, sometimes you can fight with loved ones. J.B. actually just wrote a magnificent blog about conflict and resolution the other. Well today both Jamie and Cy’s groups spent a good chunk of the morning what I will call “bickering.” There wasn’t too much physical contact between everyone, just a lot of screaming. But, also as J.B. mentioned, they were quick to reconcile. What they were all bickering about? It would be hard to say, though I am going scapegoat the six inches of snow and colder weather that came in overnight.

Regardless, everything calmed down once they all realized something special was in store for them today: lots of strawberries, blood oranges, grape tomatoes, radishes, and sparkling blush cider with raspberries and mint leaves! Once their bellies were full of delicious treats, bygones were bygones and everybody had a restful afternoon.

Here are some photos from today:

Missy enjoying her plate of tomatoes and strawberries

And her daughter, Honey B, enjoying the same thing on the other side of the sanctuary!

The devilishly handsome Willy B

Gordo lovingly admiring his radishes

And Dora. Oh so sweet little Dora resting after the parties

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

A Valentine for Burrito (and friends)!

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Wonderful friend of the sanctuary, Paulette Wrisley, sponsored this special day of sanctuary in honor of all the chimpanzees and bovines she loves so much, and most especially for someone who makes a lot of hearts swoon and swell, her Pal:

“My one true love Valentine, Burrito!”

Paulette, heartfelt gratitude for all you do to celebrate Burrito, and all the amazing individuals who call the sanctuary home, and for helping to ensure they are forever surrounded by joy, love and possibility, honored every day for exactly who they are.

Your Valentine 🙂 :

Burrito in his natural state of “The Zooms”:

Sleeping Arrangements

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J.B. and I have been monitoring the chimps on the security cameras since the integration. We’re not watching them all the time, but we have a couple of iPads on after hours so we can take a look if we hear anything. It’s been interesting to see the changes in where the chimpanzees bed down for the night.

Initially, after the first few months of the integration, Honey B, Mave, and Willy B would sleep together in the front room area with the other group of six scattered about. At some point, this changed. I can’t say for sure, but I believe it was Mave who made the first integration move, choosing to make a nest in the catwalk of the Lupine Playroom near some of her new friends. From the other group, I saw Rayne on a couple of occasions nesting in the front rooms with Honey B, Willy B. and Mave or just Honey B and Willy B.

After a few months, I noticed that Willy B would start his nesting in the front rooms, but at some point in the night, he would make his way to the Mezzanine. Now, he disappears into the playrooms. This is all part of the integration process and one that is happening on their own timeline and based on nuances in their relationships and personalities that are a bit of a mystery.

Honey B has always liked the cubby in the mezzanine, and she is a woman of routine who knows what she likes. Given the happenings in the video I put together today, we’ll just see how things shake out.

Happy Birthday, Meg!

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Heartfelt thanks to Cynthia Cavalle for sponsoring a day of sanctuary in honor of her daughter, Meg Casey! Cynthia shared this really lovely message about Meg and her gift:

“Happy Birthday to my daughter, Meg! Meg is dedicated to supporting animal rights and works to promote environmental responsibility. She volunteers to collect pet food and distributes the donations to small pantries and local organizations. Meg is a high school teacher who supports her students during these stressful times by helping them to believe in themselves and to be kind to each other. At the end of each day we share the heartwarming and hilarious news from the chimps, caretakers, cows, cats and all others at CSNW!”

It’s, I think, more inspiring and uplifting than ever before to know of wonderful humans in the world and the myriad of ways one can make a difference for others. Happiest of birthdays to you, Meg, from all of us here! May it be a beautiful day of celebration ushering all the good your kind heart shares back to you. Thank you for all you do to add brightness to life.

Queen Neggie:

Foxie and Blueberry Muffin:

Best of friends, “Mora” (Mave and Dora 🙂 ), hugging:

Gordo:

Missy:

Honey B, Missy’s daughter:

Honey (background) and her daughter, Meredith:

Conflict and Reconciliation

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A quick word of warning: If you do not wish to see footage of chimps being aggressive towards one another, please skip this video.

Recently, Grace posted to our social media accounts asking people to submit questions for Q&A posts on our blog. One of the questions jumped out at me: What is the best and worst part of your job? I immediately thought of dozens of things I like best about this line of work – we get to provide the chimps with life-changing and long overdue experiences like going outdoors and climbing trees, we help them form new friendships, we are treated on a daily basis to displays of intelligence and emotion that many people still believe are reserved for humans alone, and we get to do the thing we love with people we enjoy working with in a breathtakingly beautiful environment. Oh, and I get to drive a tractor sometimes. Maybe I should have put that first? Anyway, how could I choose just one “best” thing?

But when it comes to the worst part of the job, there’s no question in my mind what it is: it’s the violence.

Chimpanzees are naturally aggressive. Not all the time, mind you, or even most of the time. Aggression actually makes up a very small part of their daily activity and is just a tiny facet of their overall demeanor. Most of their waking hours are spent resting, quietly grooming, exploring, and playing. And most of their interactions with one another are overwhelmingly friendly and cooperative – and often extremely gentle, tender, and loving. But these hours upon hours of peace and playfulness are punctuated by boisterous displays of dominance and, on occasion, acts of real, raw violence – violence between the very people we have dedicated our careers, and in many ways our whole lives, to caring for. For us caregivers, it amounts to a lot of worrying about a thing over which we have very little control.

Which brings me to this video. I’ve been wanting to share it for a while, for a couple of reasons. First, when a chimpanzee gets injured here at CSNW, people naturally ask who was fighting and why. Our answer is usually some form of “I don’t know” and “I don’t know.” It’s not because we aren’t paying attention, but rather because the nature of chimp fights make them hard to interpret at times. They can happen quickly with little warning, they rarely occur between only two individuals, and the individuals who get into a fight in the first place are not always the ones who come away injured. I’m grateful for the many books and documentaries that have demonstrated chimpanzees’ remarkable capacity for strategic aggression, but reality is often so much messier. Yes, chimps sometimes exhibit coalitionary aggression for the purpose of social status. But in addition to being Machiavellian, chimpanzees are also xenophobic, insecure, jealous, petty, anxious, and just plain cranky, and any and all of these can serve as the impetus to bite someone’s finger off.

Second, it’s important for people to get an accurate picture of how chimps live. We don’t want anyone to think that life for chimpanzees is nothing but eating, playing, and climbing trees. While we often discuss their injuries, we aren’t usually in a position to show the fights in which they occurred. As you can see, however, we can occasionally capture them on our security camera system.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to show you how they make up afterwards. Chimp societies wouldn’t hold together very long if the individuals within them didn’t have the capacity to reconcile, and that is the saving grace for both the chimpanzees themselves and our own ability to care for them. Because no matter how bad things get, they usually find a way to move forward together.

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So…the video. For what it’s worth, I’ve made it unlisted on YouTube so hopefully anyone watching will find it here and will also be reading this for context.

In the video, which is from December, you witness the beginning of the conflict as Willy B and Terry run out into the Greenhouse. Terry is upset, which you can see as he screams and splays himself out on the catwalk before running back inside for reassurance. The video picks up again in the Playroom, where Terry and Willy B face off momentarily by the door downstairs. The group congregates upstairs and Rayne then approaches Mave who is at the top of the tree structure. As Willy B moves in, possibly to protect Mave (though that is certainly open to interpretation), he comes face to face with Gordo. And that’s when all heck breaks loose. It took me several minutes of playing over and over in slow mo to piece together what was happening. For a time, I even falsely accused Rayne of a crime she didn’t commit. Sorry, Raynie!

We often differentiate between minor chimp fights and more serious ones based on whether or not they “ball up.” Balling up occurs when they grapple and bite, as opposed to chasing and hitting, at which point the caregivers can no longer tell who is who in real time. When chimps ball up, we know that we are going to have to look for injuries afterwards – checking ears and counting fingers and toes as they tend to their wounds. In this case, the chimps ball up for only a brief moment. They leap down to the floor through the fire hose vines and Willy B escapes up the stairs only to find his finger caught in Lucky’s mouth. He somehow manages to withdraw his finger intact and escapes through Playroom 3 to the Mezzanine where the screaming and reassurance-seeking continues. Fortunately, everyone made it out with only minor injuries.

At breakfast the next morning, Gordo – who was uninjured in the fight and whose “side,” you could say, came out on top – approached Willy B to reconcile. Breathy panting serves to express friendly intentions, and Gordo offers both his backside and his fingers and toes to Willy B. Isn’t it ironic that the way to make up after a fight in which you tried bite each other’s toes off is to place your toes in each other’s mouths again? While Mave and Rayne similarly reconcile, Gordo asks Willy B to follow him upstairs to groom. And once again, all is well.

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So that’s a chimp fight and the aftermath. Some are more serious, many less so. Some last for only a minute or two while others have gone on for as long as 20 minutes. The boys fight the boys, the girls fight the girls, and the boys and girls fight each other. It happens in new groups and in groups like the seven that have been together for 17 years. They are loud and fast and frequently complicated. Serious fights are relatively rare but they’re part of caring for chimps and while you never really get used to it, you do come to accept it. Running a tortoise sanctuary would certainly be better for the ol’ blood pressure. But if you love caring for chimps, as I do, you can’t pick and choose which parts you get to experience.

I’m sure this post raises more questions than it answers, so ask away and I’ll do my best to respond below! And my thanks to all of you for allowing us to explore a more serious and fraught topic from time to time. Hopefully it helps present a truer version of sanctuary life for both the chimps and the humans that care for them.