Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.

Diana

Man of Mystery

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Willy B remains somewhat of a mystery to me and to some of the chimpanzees too, I think.

Maybe he’s the big silent type. He definitely can be difficult to read and he rarely makes eye contact when I’m serving him food. That trait, combined with his size, has caused me to affectionately refer to him as a gorilla.

He seems to take time to feel settled and is rather aloof in new situations. With all of the many new experiences and combinations of new chimpanzees he’s been meeting, he’s been pretty aloof for the last few weeks, with very rare breaks to let his guard down for a bit to play with Burrito.

Most of the time, he’s been keeping to himself. Today, we gave him and the rest of the group access to the front rooms for the first time. He’s seen other chimps in those rooms, but hasn’t really had the chance to hang out in them. He seemed to enjoy the option to get away from the group and it gave us the chance to snap a couple of photos of him (above) in front room four, which we also call the “portrait studio” because of the nice lighting.

It was the first time in over a month that I’ve been able to get him to respond just a little to my invitation to play chase. It didn’t last long, but he did his characteristic double-tap across front room three a couple of times. Maybe he was just humoring me.

Despite his relatively mellow nature, as he gets more comfortable, we have observed him being the tiniest bit intimidating at meals. All it takes from this large guy is the slightest look or a motion of his arm, presumably indicating that he wants the food being served, and the female chimpanzees next to him react in fear. I don’t blame them! He’s a gorilla!

Interestingly, Burrito doesn’t seem intimidated by him at meals and will sit right next to him when they are being served, even taking food that Willy B has dropped. Is this because Willy B doesn’t want to dominate Burrito in the same way he easily does the females, or is he playing it cool for the moment until he gets more comfortable? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Burrito has actually surprised us quite a bit. We tend to think of him as someone who gets wound up and just can’t contain his energy, but he’s clearly modulating his displays and being careful not to charge anyone. Who knew Burrito had so much self control? The calming presence of Mave is likely helping him (these two have been grooming a LOT), but even before she was added to the group on Thursday, Burrito was impressing us with his heretofore-unknown ability to keep his composure. Even chimpanzees we’ve known for over a decade can surprise us.

Connections Made and Lost

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Working at a chimpanzee sanctuary, I never anticipated the number of (human) people I would get to know. I like to say, because I believe it is verifiably true, that the chimpanzees have brought the most amazing people into my life.

No one has ever called me a social butterfly, but even an introvert like me has managed to develop unexpected relationships over the years with those who hold the chimpanzees in the hearts. I can’t help but respect people who love the chimpanzees. Even if I don’t know donors very well, I think about them often.

Because of our sponsor-a-day and personalized/memorial stone fundraising programs, we learn about the people (human and non) in the lives of donors who they love and, often, who they have lost. It’s an intimate view that we wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s something that is special way beyond the dollars that are generated to help care for the chimpanzees.

When donors themselves pass, sometimes we find out because relatives make donations in their honor and sometimes, because we’ve had a personal connection to them at some point, we find out like any friend or acquaintance would – through the heartbreaking announcements that those left behind make in order to inform everyone that someone irreplaceable is gone.

This year we have received far too many of those announcements. I don’t feel it’s the sanctuary’s place to pass along this information outside of the circle of people who are directly connected, but I’m so glad that we have ways to honor them in non-public ways.

To anyone who has lost someone this year, my heart goes out to you. To all of the donors who have passed this year, thank you for being the generous being you were and for spreading your light.

Today was a gorgeous day at the sanctuary. Before the humans arrived, I saw on the remote camera that Willy B and Burrito were sitting in front of a window grooming up on the catwalk of the playroom, silhouetted by the gentle morning light. These guys have been somewhat reserved with each other the last few days. There haven’t been any raucous games of chase or wrestling, like on Wednesday when they first got together, but today they had at least three quiet grooming sessions.

Mave, Honey B, and Negra spent some of the morning relaxing in the greenhouse before I shifted everyone to allow the “Girl Gang” to have some time on Young’s Hill.

J.B. snapped these winning photos.

Jamie

 

Jody and Foxie having a moment of excitement together.

 

Missy looking strong and contemplative.

If you are familiar with our now rather-complicated building, you might wonder how Jamie, Jody, Foxie, Missy, and Annie got onto the hill without disrupting Willy B and Burrito. And the answer is, they did disrupt them. We decided it was time for a little disruption. The girl gang went out through the chute, right past the playroom where Willy B and Burrito were together.

They guys spied on them through the windows and did some (separate) displaying, but overall there wasn’t as much drama as I was anticipating, given that they haven’t seen each other in a while.

It was a good day.

 

New Space

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While we are on a bit of break with the introductions, Jamie, Missy, Jody, Annie, and Foxie are spending their time in the new Phase 1 area of the building. Foxie was with Burrito in there for about a week, but Wednesday was the first time the others got to go into that space (and the chute too!).

I wasn’t able to get any good photos of them in the chute (or when they went on patrol on the hill) today, but here they are enjoying the new indoor rooms:

Foxie and Missy playing downstairs:

Then grooming upstairs in what we are referring to as the mezzanine:

Jody inspecting some toy tools next to Foxie:

A grooming triangle with Missy on the left and Jamie on the right:

Missy trying out a new bed/bench in the mezzanine (I think it met with her approval):

Annie just holding Missy’s foot while lying on the floor in the mezzanine:

 

The Best Laid Plans

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Today we made an attempt to introduce Burrito and Foxie to the calm group of eight that have been doing really well for the last few days, and things did not go as we had hoped.

There were some really good moments and everyone seemed to want to get to know each other, but the anxiety seemed to be just too much and a few serious fights broke out. No one needed medical intervention beyond medication, but because things just did not calm down, we decided we needed to separate them.

They aren’t currently separated in social configurations that we plan to keep, but everyone is safe and quiet for the night and no doubt extremely exhausted.

Now we humans regroup and decide what to do from here and try to figure out what’s best for them. There were definite glimpses of how good they could potentially work together, but the anxiousness just got the best of them. Willy B and Burrito, when finally given a chance to be next to each other (through mesh) without a gaggle of anxious onlookers, were SO excited to meet.

We have some thinking to do. We could spend a lot of time second guessing our decisions, and I’m sure we will do some of that. But, ultimately, we have to move forward in some way, even if it’s not the way we were hoping.

Like I said in my post the other day, chimpanzees are tough, and they will all be fine. We have a truly incredible caregiving team here and we are able to talk though things together. Hopefully we can remain as tough as the chimpanzees!

On the lighter side of things, during these very dramatic conflicts, can you guess what Negra was doing? If you guessed eating, you would be correct. At one point she was paging through a magazine, hoping to find some peanut butter inside (peanut butter magazines are one of her favorite food enrichment items). You’ve got to admire her singular focus and her ability to stay out of the fray.

The photo below is not from today but shows how content she is with the thought that she might find some peanut butter in between those pages:

In other news, in case you didn’t see it in social media or through our e-newsletter, Giving Day for Apes was a tremendous success for our sanctuary and for sanctuaries overall! Thank you all for your support. It takes on even more meaning when we are going through challenging times.

Trust Them

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I’m not going to lie, these last few weeks have been really challenging for all of the primates here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, and the challenges are not over.

Before you read this lengthy post, or after you read it, consider supporting the staff fundraising page now or on Tuesday, October 15th for Giving Day for Apes. We would really appreciate your support and friendship right now!

Intellectually, we humans knew that integrating the new three with the original group of seven chimpanzees would be stressful, but I’m not sure any of us knew just exactly how stressful it would be. Caring for captive chimpanzees is a weighty responsibility on an average day. For me, integrations have highlighted the added responsibilities that the sanctuary has taken on now and in the future.

We are a small sanctuary compared to many others, which means each staff member is part of the integration process and veterinarian Dr. Erin is playing the crucial and also stressful standby role in case someone gets injured.

Things are going remarkably well, but there have been fights with a couple of minor injuries. Chimpanzees do not generally hold their emotions back, as you have seen in the two integration videos we’ve shared. They scream when they are anxious, scared, angry, offended, or even just really happily excited. Since screaming is a high-arousal state, there’s more of a chance for fights to happen. And that’s just on a normal day with a group of chimpanzees who have known each other for a long time. Throw in complete strangers and the need for some of the chimps to stake their position within the group, and fighting is bound to occur. It’s just part of chimpanzee social behavior.

There are various levels of fighting. Often fights are loud and dramatic but without contact between participants. We know from the last eleven+ years, that sometimes the fights do result in fairly significant (at least significant from our human perspective) injuries. Aside from bites to the body, which are not infrequent but generally not concerning, both Negra and Jody have had toes bitten off, Jody had an eyelid torn, Missy had a large split to her lip, and several of the chimps are missing parts of their ears to bites that happened at the sanctuary or before they came here. It was only a few weeks ago when Burrito bit part of Foxie’s ear off, as described in this worth-your-read blog post by Anna. That incident seemed to be a sudden reaction to who-knows-what and happened in an instant. Since then, Burrito and Foxie have been friendly and playful with each other and we still consider them very close, which is why they will join the group together when we feel it’s time.

These injuries are rare enough that I can name them very quickly, but they certainly stand out in the minds of the humans, particularly when they have required us to separate the injured in order to provide medical help. You might be surprised what it takes for us to intervene. Chimpanzees are tough! They can casually walk around with an injury that would make any human I know go to the ER in a panic. When Jody lost her toe during a fight years ago, we gave her some analgesics and some antibiotics and she carried on as though nothing had happened.

So far we haven’t seen these more serious injuries during the introduction process, but it’s what we brace ourselves for when we hear the chimpanzees starting to scream. There’s not a whole lot that we can do to stop a fight from escalating but you can be sure we are standing by and watching. As much as possible, we try to stay out of the fight as we watch. Often the chimpanzees will approach us from the other side of the caging and ask for reassurance. Because we can’t actually back them up, it would be a mistake to reach out with a reassurance gesture in those moments. It’s not our place to take sides.

The best piece of advice that Amy Fultz from Chimp Haven has given us is to trust in the chimpanzees. They are meant to live in groups and they can usually work things out. The fact that all of the chimpanzees so far dived into the new group situation without hesitation, eagerly embracing each other upon meeting, bodes well for their future relationships. There are no guarantees, but there are so many good signs so far.

The potential benefits of bringing them together and allowing them to work things out are huge. Each of them will have an expanded social network. They all will have more options for who to groom, play with, or just sit next to at lunch. For chimpanzees who will spend the rest of their lives in captivity, this is a big deal.

While I wish I could take away every bit of everyone’s anxiety, that anxiety is part of being a social primate too. I remember being terrified on the first day of school as a kid. I wanted to meet new people but I was worried I wouldn’t fit in on day one or ever. I was sure the whole experience was going to be a disaster. Within a few days, though, things were fine and I had already made friends or reconnected with kids I hadn’t seen all summer. Eventually, I formed strong friendships with certain people, and those friendships were invaluable to my overall wellbeing, enriching my life like nothing else possibly could.

That is what we hope we can provide for all ten of these chimpanzees who we care for so deeply.

We know there will be fights in the future, but we also know there will be laughter, play, making nests next to each other, and the sharing of everyday happenings and not-so-everyday adventures. We have already seen some very touching and unexpected moments, like the play between Missy and Willy B and Willy B and Negra in the video above. Seeing potential friendships starting to build is so exciting!

I would love to skip ahead to the days of zero anxiety, but, in the meantime, I will keep reminding myself to trust them.

Did I mention that we humans would really appreciate your support and friendship right now? There’s actually a lot of sanctuary people you can support now or on Tuesday for Giving Day for Apes – the staff, the board of directors, and the volunteers and interns. Or just give on the main page! All donations from all pages will go to the care of the chimpanzees and the running of the sanctuary. 

Thank you!

What’s in a Name?

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One question that we receive pretty frequently is whether the chimpanzees had their names before coming to the sanctuary. The answer, for all of them, is yes. The laboratories or other facilities where they were born or who acquired them, gave them both numbers and names. The numbers were tattooed somewhere on their bodies, often across their chest or inside of their thighs. These numbers are surprisingly large, but we don’t see them very often because their hair has grown over the tattoos.

With Annie, Missy, Jamie, Jody, Burrito, Foxie, and Negra, their names followed them from one laboratory to another. For Mave, Honey B, and Willy B, they were named at the laboratory LEMSIP and their names stayed with them when they went to Wildlife Waystation when they were around five years old. All of the chimpanzees have been referred to by these names for most or the entirety of their lives.

The “B” after  Honey B and Willy B’s names signified that they were the children of chimpanzee mothers who were owned by the Buckshire Corporation, the same facility that owned Annie, Missy, Jamie, Jody, Burrito, Foxie, and Negra.

Upon learning this, some people have asked if we might drop the “B” from Honey B and Willy B’s names. I have definitely thought about this. But then I think about three things…

First, they have always had and been called these names. A name is just a word, but it does provide a part of their identity. I honestly don’t know whether the chimpanzees would be bothered if we started calling them different names, but I would find it strange for people I just met to call me by a name that was different than what I had been referred to for decades. (That said, we do have nicknames for everyone that we use interchangeable with their given names, like JoJo for Jody or Bubba for Burrito. I think this is different since nicknames develop over time.)

Second, one of the tragedies that occurred in their previous lives was being separated from their mothers and/or separated from their children. It’s possible to piece together relationships and genealogy when names have not changed. An ambitious project that demonstrates this is The Last 1,000 which is chronicling the last 1,000 chimpanzee used in biomedical research and identifying when they move from laboratories to sanctuaries or when they pass away. We knew Missy’s daughter Honey B was at Wildlife Waystation because Honey B’s name had not changed. Keeping their names, in my mind, respects relationships that were torn apart and helps us remember that behind each of those names, however the names came about, is or was a unique individual.

Third, why would we change Honey B’s name but not Burrito’s or Negra’s? Burrito is a very silly name. I don’t know who named him that or how that name came about, and I don’t really care to know. I don’t think I would ever name a chimpanzee Burrito. But Burrito is Burrito. He’s grown into the chimpanzee person he is over the last eleven years at the sanctuary. His name very uniquely identifies him, but you all know him because of the colorful personality behind his name.

Here’s Burrito looking out some windows in Phase 1, the new part of the building where he’s currently living:

Negra, the word for “black” in Spanish, is an equally strange and sometimes awkward name. But when I think of Negra I don’t think about the word negra, I think of a somewhat grumpy chimpanzee with blankets over her head who is asking me for her night bag. Or I think of this Negra, who had some serious all-over-body bedhead on Saturday:

If you read my blog post a couple of days ago, you know that I had a certain connection specifically to Honey B’s name before ever meeting her, having just seen her name on a piece of paper. The dog I named Honey B after her will always remain a part of my heart. Honey B the dog somehow grew into her name almost immediately. I don’t think she had a mystical connection to the chimpanzee Honey B, but I am so glad she carried her name. Here’s a photo of Honey B the dog, in case you are curious:

Willy B, Mave, and Honey B Chimpanzee have the opportunity to create new identities at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, but I would like to honor who they are and all the people who have known them over the years by keeping the names they’ve always had. They will reveal who they are little by little and we will know them for the unique and very special chimpanzee people they have always been.

So far, even though they are still at times anxious, Jody and Missy seem to appreciate getting to know the one and only Willy B. I found them both grooming him at the same time in the greenhouse on Saturday. He doesn’t look like he’s hating this attention….

An Unlikely Story About Honey B

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This is a story I first told at our gala in June. Though now it has a very exciting ending or maybe more of a beginning of an ending. It’s a lot of words… feel free to skim and skip down to the photos of Honey B I took today.

PREFACE

I don’t myself believe in fate, but I could see how this tale might be interesting for those who do believe in predestination.

CHAPTER ONE

The story begins when I was working at a sanctuary called the Fauna Foundation in Quebec, Canada. The fifteen chimpanzees that I worked with at Fauna had all been used in biomedical testing at a laboratory called LEMSIP in upstate New York. When LEMSIP was closing in the late 1990s, there was a scramble, led by LEMSIP’s head veterinarian, to get the chimpanzees into sanctuaries instead of being shipped to the Coulston Foundation, a laboratory in New Mexico that was ill-regarded even within the laboratory community and had amassed numerous animal welfare violations.

The sanctuary world was very small at that time and there were not many places for chimpanzees. Gloria Grow, founder of the Fauna Foundation, had never cared for chimpanzees before, but she had a sanctuary for wayward farmed animals and she wanted to do something more.

A former LEMSIP employee had given Gloria a list from 1993 of all of the chimpanzees who lived at LEMSIP. We would pour over that list, looking for relatives of the 15 chimpanzees who arrived at Fauna in 1996. She helped to identify where some of the other chimpanzees went, whether to other sanctuaries or to Coulston.

Over the course of the three years I worked at Fauna, I spent hours looking at that list with Gloria’s handwritten notes on it. I wondered about the personalities behind all of those names. I wondered if they were okay.

I don’t know why, but some of the names just stuck with me. Honey B was one of the names on that list.

I had heard that Honey B was the half sister of Jethro, a large adolescent guy at Fauna who loved to play chase. I knew that Jethro, Honey B, and another chimpanzee at Fauna, Binky, had all been together in the “nursery” at LEMSIP after they were taken from their mothers.

 

CHAPTER TWO

In 2005, I found myself outside of New Orleans at a shelter that was taking care of dogs and cats that had been left behind after Hurricane Katrina. This was a few years after J.B. and I left Fauna for other academic and professional adventures. We were living in upstate New York at the time, and there was no way (well, maybe there was a small way) I was planning on bringing home a dog to our peaceful feline household.

But a dog at the shelter adopted me and her owners did not want her back. She was not the dog I would have chosen if I had been deliberately searching for a pup. She chased cats and didn’t want anything to do with other dogs, or other people for that matter. But she decided I was her person, and I accepted this without questioning it for very long. I broke the news to J.B. over the phone and he also didn’t question it.

Now, we needed a name for her. The name that I landed on was Honey B. Not Honey Bee, though I’m sure that’s what most people thought of when I mentioned her name. No, this somewhat surly Chow Chow from Louisiana that was my new best friend was named after a chimpanzee I had never met.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Honey B the dog, J.B., me, and our three cats (Cuba, LouLou, and Peanut) moved from our Victorian house in upstate New York to work at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in 2008, just a month before Annie, Missy, Jody, Jamie, Foxie, Burrito, and Negra arrived from Buckshire, the laboratory holding facility where they had lived for decades. Buckshire leased out the chimpanzees they owned to different laboratories, including LEMSIP before it closed down.

Buckshire provided us with some of the medical records of the seven chimpanzees who now called Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and Cle Elum, Washington their home. I was looking through Missy’s record, and lo and behold, I discovered that she was the mother of the chimpanzee Honey B! I dug up the old LEMSIP list that for some reason I had moved with me from Quebec to Massachusetts to New York to Washington and confirmed this information.

I thought, “what are the odds of that?!”

Honey B the dog didn’t pay much attention to the chimpanzees, but after the chimps’ two-acre outdoor area, Young’s Hill, was built, J.B. and I would take her on walks around the outside of the perimeter fence. Despite her lack of affection for more than a few (okay, two) people, she was a really easygoing dog in a lot of ways and didn’t need to be on a leash. Every once in a while, she and Missy would run down the hill on opposite sides of the fence together.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

In May of this year, I learned that the chimpanzees at Wildlife Waystation were in need of new homes. I knew that Honey B the chimpanzee, the daughter of Missy and the namesake to my beloved now-deceased Chow Chow, lived there. I had still never met her. Side-note: Missy’s son Josh also lives at Wildlife Waystation.

We were just wrapping up the first phase of the expansion at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, expecting to bring three or four chimpanzees in need to (hopefully) expand the chimpanzee family of seven.

After visiting Wildlife Waystation, we knew we could and needed to immediately help at least some of the chimpanzees there. J.B. and I met all of the 42 chimpanzees. They are all wonderful and deserving. Their groups vary in size, but there were only three groups of an appropriate number for us to consider bringing to CSNW. After talking to the care staff about personalities, it seemed clear that Honey B and her group mates Willy B and Mave, would have the best chance of integrating into our group of seven.

Less than three months later, J.B. and I drove down to California and returned with Honey B the chimpanzee and her two friends.

Four days ago, mother Missy and daughter Honey B touched each other for the first time after 30 years of being apart. It was clear from the records we have that Honey B was taken from Missy when she was less than a day old, and there’s no indication that they recognize they are related, but we hope there’s a chance they will become friends.

Left to right: Honey B, Missy, Annie