See today’s blog video to learn more about some of the many ways we safely interact with the chimpanzees while coming along for a morning of play with Gordo!
Archives for October 2025
In honor of Dr. Jane Goodall
Our heartfelt thanks to Chris Lewis for sponsoring this day of sanctuary for the chimpanzees and cows in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall:
“Thank you Dr. Goodall for all you did for chimps around the world.”
Our deeply saddened hearts join those the world over in mourning the loss of Dr. Jane Goodall. Thank you so much, Chris, for thinking of the sanctuary residents in honoring her extraordinary life and legacy she shared with us all.
Negra (above), Annie, and Jody were all born in Africa before being captured as infants and shipped to the US for use in biomedical research. Just imagine if they’d been able to live the lives they were meant to with their families in the wild.
Annie:
Jody:
Jody, Missy, Annie, Burrito, and Foxie:
Jamie:
Honey, Meredith, and Betsy:
George:
Terry:
Gordo:
Honey B:
2025 CSNW Yearbook Spotlight
If you have checked out our HOOT! auction thus far, you may have seen that we have a CSNW 2025 Yearbook for sale! I wanted to spend today’s blog talking more about it.
Back in March, Ellen had made Cy his very own gossip magazine for his birthday. If you haven’t seen the blog that featured that, you can check it out here. This magazine gave me the idea of creating a CSNW yearbook, with the vision of it being a hard-back coffee-table-like book that can preserve special CSNW pictures forever! I asked Ellen to collaborate with me on this and then we were off to brainstorm.
We wanted to keep the true “yearbook feel” so we included a “class” photo page (the one with the individual head shot photos in a row with names under), an autograph page, pages dedicated to each chimpanzee group, individual spotlights and written bios, and even comedic superlatives and “CSNW clubs”.
You may be asking, what is so special about this yearbook? Well, for one, every photo in this book was taken in 2025. Some of the photos haven’t even been featured on the blog yet! Another special thing is that Ellen and I, as two of the chimps’ caregivers, typed every word and put thought into each page, with the hope of depicting each individual chimpanzee and representing each dynamic personality. It’s not just a book that an online site has made and spit out. Ellen and I hand-picked each photo, typed, and placed everything on the screens ourselves. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind keepsake!
We’re hoping the yearbook will be well-received enough to make it an annual thing, documenting all the best moments of each year to come!
You can purchase your own yearbook on our HOOT! auction page here, as well as checking out our other auction items!
It would be rude of me to not provide some type of teaser for you, considering we have only shared the hardback cover so far…
**These are screenshots so the images will be better in the book itself **
Screenshot of Superlative teaser:
Screenshot of Foxie and George page teaser:
Thank you for your support, as always!
For Skye, in memory of Angela
Many thanks to Tobin, for sponsoring a day of sanctuary in honor of her friends, Skye and Angela. Tobin shared this message about today:
“On this World Animal Day, October 4, I am sponsoring this day of sanctuary in honor of my friend, Skye, and in memory of Skye’s beloved soulmate, Angela. During their many years together as a devoted couple, Angela and Skye made their home a sanctuary for cats and dogs. Like my old friend Jody, these two women are and were excellent den mothers. As I think of them both, I think that their care for animals demonstrates lives well lived, of love that wills the good for others.”
Betsy and Honey:
Missy, Annie, and Burrito:
Jody and Foxie:
Honey B and Rayne:
The Hilltop Trio and a Downhill Dash
George has been getting out on the Bray more and now that he’s more comfortable he is out at the same time as Jamie’s group and recently Missy (followed by Jamie) was, seemingly, walking up Young’s Hill alongside George who was in the Bray. Caregiver Kelsi and I stopped everything to go outside and check it out and were able to record some footage of the event.
Don’t forget you can join us online for our HOOT event for pre-show at 6:00 and live broadcast at 6:30 (PT) and we have our online auction going through the weekend!
Fall Forage on HOOT! Eve!
October rolled in yesterday and with it the cool, damp weather that you would expect. The chimpanzees seem to truly appreciate an autumn moment and are always up for a fall forage. There’s an undeniable peace that washes over the sanctuary as we all embrace being a little bit damp.
Meanwhile, the anticipation is building for tomorrow’s big event! HOOT! is all set to take place in Seattle and we couldn’t be more excited. I’ve also been eagerly watching the bidding for the online auction and that amazing painting of George has really caught my attention! If you aren’t able to join us in-person tomorrow, be sure to join us online so you don’t miss out on the fun.
Here are a few pictures from the lunch forage we set out for Jamie’s group today.
Jamie:
Annie:
Burrito (with a plastic bone):
Foxie with a new mermaid doll:
A message from Jamie, probably…
“October is finally here and it’s officially the Season of Jamieween!! IYKYK.”
“And if you don’t know yet, we celebrate my birthday on October 31st (aka Halloween) and it’s rightly one of the biggest celebrations of the year! So get ready! Now. (Said with unblinking eyes peering through your very souls).”- Jamie, probably.
Jamie is going to be 48!
To know Jamie is to know a force of nature. She is strong, creative, intelligent, mischievous, silly, opinionated, willful, intimidating, demanding, beautiful, and unspeakably resilient. And not without her scary side. It’s not always easy being her friend, but it’s a privilege unlike any other.
Our summer visits for our amazing donors just wrapped up last weekend and one of the highlights for guests (and all of us, to be honest) is being able to observe Jamie and her group forage for their lunch on Young’s Hill, their two-acre outdoor habitat. As we point out each of the chimpanzees to everyone I always delight in bringing everyone’s attention to Jamie, immediately recognizable by her no nonsense, straight-backed, power-stance posture. It’s very Jamie.
Like her group-mates (Negra, Foxie, Burrito, Missy, Annie, and previously, Jody), Jamie spent thirty years of her life in biomedical research, living in a cage the size of a bathroom stall. They’ve known one another longer than we’ve known them. Where her background differs from theirs is that she spent the first nine years of her life living with a trainer in the entertainment industry, probably being raised much like a human child until she certainly became too powerful and dangerous to control any longer. The trainer then sold her to a dealer who sold her into biomedical research. Jamie is very human-oriented and we’ve often said that of all the chimpanzees, we feel she is most uniquely aware of her captivity.
Also like her group-mates, Jamie has approached her so far seventeen+ years in sanctuary with arms and heart wide open to every choice and opportunity provided to her. The level of resilience and tenacity that takes is beyond comprehension.
“Jamieween” is easily one of the biggest, most anticipated celebrations here at the sanctuary. When October 31st was chosen as her honorary birthday there was no way of knowing just how appropriate of a date it is. Anything a little spooky, creepy, macabre? She is all in. Skeletons, mummies, and blood? She’s fascinated! There is no one like Jamie. And how incredible is it that she gets to be celebrated and honored for exactly who she is, that she finally gets to have a sense of agency over her life, how she wants to spend her time, and how she wants the humans to care for her.
Here is one of my all time favorite Jamie stories. Jamie LOVES tools, machinery, utility vehicles, anything with some power to it. And as many of you have seen over the years, she also LOVES walking with her caregivers around her outdoor enclosure (her inside, us outside, of course), and all the better if we are racing on foot or by Gator. So imagine her perceived perfect combo when one day she spotted J.B. doing some work at the top of Young’s Hill with the chainsaw! Yep! She sure did try to get him to chase her around the perimeter of the hill with the chainsaw!! This is quintessential (and horrifyingly and hilariously) Jamie!! Of course, thankfully, J.B. isn’t a run-with-scissors (or chainsaws) kinda guy, which I can imagine Jamie was pretty disgusted with. 😉 (If you caught J.B.’s recent post about George hurling a carrot at the USDA inspector, just imagine if this kind of scene happened during his visit! HA!).
We love her so much.
Racing with some of her caregivers:
And no Jamieween was, or ever will be, complete without our beloved “Great Pumpkin Thief”, Jody. She heisted the pumpkin every year! Always in our hearts:
Here at the sanctuary the entire month of October belongs to Jamie (as it should), but we are also thrilled to celebrate Negra’s sweet son, Noah, who is turning 36 on October 17th! We had the wonderful opportunity to meet Noah at his sanctuary home, Save the Chimps, in Florida and he’s such a special guy! (Photo courtesy of Save the Chimps):
His mom, Negra:
As life would have it, we are so often asked to hold joy and grief in the same breath and as I was writing this, we learned along with the rest of the world of the profoundly sad news that Dr. Jane Goodall passed away this morning at the age of 91. She was on tour, just as she had chosen to spend most days of her life for the last many years, endlessly dedicated to protecting, raising awareness of, and hope for, this astounding and invaluable world we all get the privilege to share with so many remarkable beings. She was a remarkable being.
Anything I could say here would fall short. How grateful we are that we got to live in a world with Jane Goodall and for the immense difference she made in so many lives, be they human, tree, dog, chimpanzee…so many beings. The world won’t be the same without her. And for countless of us, it won’t be the same because of her.
She will be so deeply missed and our hearts are with all mourning her absence. I hope her inspiration finds a kaleidoscope of ways to continue shining through us all.
