Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for September 2025

Nesting with George: Part 2

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Anna posted a few weeks ago about George becoming more comfortable here at CSNW and starting to take part in normal chimpanzee behaviors such nest building. In the beginning his nests were pretty sparse and made mostly of scraps of paper, boxes and the occasional blanket. More recently George started making much more elaborate nests of blankets and large sheets of paper we offer him as an enrichment item. In the wild chimpanzee’s make a new nest every night so here we do deconstruct their nests daily during our cleaning routine and we make sure they have clean blankets, paper and enrichment items they might like to include in their nests, like boxes, scarves and wooden blocks.

 

George in one of his first, more elaborate blanket nests. You can see he has a box of enrichment items that we offer all the chimps so they can carry them, play with them and just use the items as they see fit. Sometimes these items even make their way into nest designs, especially with the more experienced nest builders like Negra and Jamie:

 

In this nest he included some magazine pages:

 

Here, George opted for a paper base with a blanket over him:

Pausing for Connection

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As caregivers, our days are often jam-packed. We’re constantly on the move: cleaning, doing laundry, serving meals, washing dishes, training, doing more cleaning, and currently working on introductions with George throughout the week. With so much going on, it can be hard to slow down.

Yesterday, while I was cleaning in Greenhouse 2, Gordo and Cy each came over separately to play chase and hang out by the shared window, between Playroom 2 and Greenhouse 2. It was such a nice pause in the middle of a busy day, a reminder of what this work is really all about.

Foxie is especially good at getting her caregivers to take a break and spend time with her. She has her own way of inviting you in: she drops her doll and makes raspberry sounds until you pick it up and hand it back to her. But, before she’ll take it, you have to play. She loves being tickled with her doll, seeing you hug her doll, playing “troll ski,” or having her head gently rubbed with her doll’s head. Once she’s satisfied, she takes her doll back and strolls off on her way.

These moments that pause the busy routine to connect, are what make the work so meaningful.

Here is a portrait series of Foxie with Disney Simea (from Moana 2):

Lucky resting on a bench:

Gordo checking himself out through my camera:

The ever so handsome Cy:

Happy Birthday, Rebecca, from Kimberly!

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Many thanks to Kimberly Mirocko for sponsoring this day of sanctuary for the chimpanzees in honor of her sister, Rebecca “Bec” Miller, for her birthday!

“Happy 50th birthday to the BEST sister anyone could have! I’m forever grateful to have you in my life! I hope Abe buys you something nice! — Kimmie Kimmie KokoNut” 

Have a wonderful day, Rebecca! And thanks to you all for loving Cy! He’s an extraordinary guy. <3

Cy and his sister, Lucky, and Dora:

Serenity

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Today was our biweekly staff meeting so I didn’t have the usual time in the afternoon to sit down and write the blog. However, I had some amazing clips from last week that I have been saving and I thought today would be the perfect day to share them in a video! Enjoy!

Never Throw a Carrot at the USDA Inspector

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It’s one of those rules that seems too obvious to have to be stated. To be fair, George is learning the ropes here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest faster than we could have imagined. But recent events made clear that we omitted at least one important rule from his freshman orientation: Never throw a carrot at the USDA inspector.

While touring Jamie’s side of the building during a routine annual inspection for our Class C License, we were subject to a surprise aerial bombardment from the direction of the Bray.

We can at least be grateful for two things: One, while George has quite the arm, he has more work to do before he’s consistently hitting targets in the 20- to 30-yard range. And two, our inspector was gracious about it and didn’t hold it against us, judging from our clean inspection report.

Exhibit A: The projectile was later recovered from beneath the grape vines

Next time, George, save those carrots for the staff and volunteers, or even the occasional visitor if you have to. Just leave the folks in uniform alone. We’ve got a reputation to uphold.

 

Terry’s Tendency Towards Tiny Things

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Terry is a big chimpanzee who pays particular attention to tiny things.

His fascination with flowers has less to do with the flowers themselves and more to do with any tiny insect that he can detect and examine.

Chad wrote a blog post a while back with a poem he penned, and photos to go along, entitled Teeny Tiny Terry.

That poem caught the attention of Mary Lee Jensvold who sent it along to her daughter Hannah who made a very special illustrated and hand bound for an online auction.

I can’t say that we have any hand-bound books in our upcoming HOOT! online auction, but we do have some really great items, including our first ever CSNW yearbook that caregivers Jenna and Ellen have been putting together just for the event!

The online auction is open to anyone and runs October 1st – October 6th.

We also have some really amazing and fun items for the in-person event. Time is running out to get tickets, so if you are anywhere near Seattle, reserve your space now!

If you are unable to attend the in-person event, be sure to RSVP to watch the livestream of the HOOT! program.