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Diana

On Resiliency

June 15, 2025 by Diana 7 Comments

Our big celebrations on June 13th got me thinking, once again, about resiliency.

I was thinking about Negra and Terry and their resiliency, and the incredible resiliency we have witnessed in all of the chimpanzees who arrived seventeen years ago after decades of use in biomedical research.

This was the first time Animal Sanctuary Caregivers Day fell on June 13th, so that caused me to think about the resiliency that is required of caregivers who work in animal sanctuaries.

The caregivers at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are incredible human beings in all regards and would be regardless of where they worked. Working as a caregiver, however, has a way of testing a person in numerous ways.

A lot of what caregivers do is very physical work, so being in good physical shape and bouncing back from inevitable injuries becomes more important than in other occupations.

Keeping in shape mentally and emotionally is perhaps even more important.

Caregivers are faced with many challenges in a given day that are often decisions that don’t have right or wrong answers. Caregivers are constantly weighing different welfare considerations against each other (for example, do I take more time scrubbing to provide an extra clean environment or do I do a quick clean so the chimpanzees can have access to the space sooner?). Living in gray areas can be uncomfortable, and it takes a lot of communication and ability to see fellow caregivers’ perspectives to avoid misunderstandings or division.

That’s just the day to day. Then there are the really big events like chimpanzees getting injured, sick or passing away that is part of the job of a caregiver. There’s the worry and grief and doubt that comes with that, and then there’s having to continue on with the daily routines for the sake of those who are still relying on that daily care.

It’s a joyful, uplifting, satisfying job; and it’s a hard job. There’s no way to do it long term without developing resiliency.

Huge kudos and gratitude and admiration and love to all of our caregivers at the sanctuary, our current staff especially, and also all of our past staff and volunteer caregivers. I have learned, and continue to learn, so much from all of you. I truly and deeply appreciate all that your bring and give to this work.

The chimpanzees are able to be their amazing selves and build their resiliency every day because of you. It’s a loop of resiliency from them to you and back again, and it spreads outward from there.

In addition to hundreds of other moments, today Negra was able to forage on Young’s Hill and bring some celery to the greenhouse to crunch, on her 6,207th day of sanctuary.

Filed Under: Caregivers, Chimp histories, Food, Latest Videos, Negra, portrait, Sanctuary, Thanks Tagged With: caregivers, history, Negra, resiliency, video

In honor of Keith La Chappelle on this Trifecta Day

June 13, 2025 by Diana 9 Comments

Tobin is the third sponsor of the day!

Thank you, Tobin for recognizing the trifecta celebration in honor of the founder of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Keith La Chappelle.

Here is Tobin’s tribute for this significant day:

I am honored and pleased to celebrate this year’s Trifecta Day in honor of my pal Negra’s birthday (she is 17 years younger than the day se came to CSNW) and the birthday of Terry. Last year, I sponsored the Trifecta Day in honor of Karen Creason and Margaret Parkinson, who were at the Sanctuary on June 13, 2008 to greet their seven new friends with blankets and toys.

This year, I wish to honor Keith La Chappelle for his corporeal acts of charity and mercy in seeking to establish a sanctuary where Negra and her six companion chimpanzees could finally live. His name is one of many whose name is on the list of the Righteous humans who have taken action to seek humane treatment of our cousins in the Tree of Life. On behalf of her Majesty (and, a later arrival, Terry the Town Talker), we thank you.

And, I so wish our beloved Neggie and our cherished Bronx Cheer-leader very happy birthday celebrations and a new year of life abounding in enjoyable experiences.

Keith and Nick

 

 

Filed Under: Negra, Sanctuary, Sponsor-a-day, Terry Tagged With: keith, Sponsor-a-day, trifecta

In memory of Marya Barey on a Special Friday the 13th

June 13, 2025 by Diana 23 Comments

Today, Friday, June 13, 2025 is the 17th arrival anniversary of the Cle Elum Seven: Jamie, Missy, Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jody, and Negra. They arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest on Friday, June 13, 2008.

truck pulling up driveway with chimps

That day in 2008 was the birth of their new lives, and we made the decision to celebrate Negra’s birthday from that day forward on June 13th. She was the eldest and we felt she needed a new beginning more than any other.

And now we also have Terry at our sanctuary, whose true date of birth is June 13th!

It’s a whole lot to celebrate, and the symbolism of the day is even more salient with the recent arrival of George.

It’s also a significant day, for a different reason, for Michail and Marya. Michail’s is the first of several sponsor-a-days that we will be sharing on this special day.

Some of you reading this will likely recognize the name Marya. She was a loyal follower and frequent commenter on this blog. Marya passed at the end of last year.

Marya was endlessly curious about the behavior of the chimpanzees and their personalities, and took obvious delight in learning more about them, asking questions on the blog, emailing me with supportive words, and sending donations whenever she could. I know Marya would be THRILLED to know that she helped get George to CSNW through her donations.

There’s so much about her that I didn’t know when she was alive, and I was glad to find out about through her husband, Michail, after she passed.

Below is his sponsor-a-day letter in memory of Marya, telling a bit of their story and their celebrations of Friday the 13ths.

You can scroll down to the end to read Michail’s summary message, which I placed in bold font, but you’ll probably want to go back to read his touching words about the love of his life. I imagine Marya might be embarrassed about this attention focused on her on the blog, I’m very glad we can recognize her in this way on a special Friday the 13th.

Jamie would approve, I just know it.

It is with great pleasure to have the opportunity to describe my first memory of being made aware of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest by my Dearly Beloved, Marya Mendelson Barey. She was getting treatment infusions in a hospital bed, and that delightful memory was the playful sounds of chimps coming out of her iPhone video, that she had discovered and was watching, commingled with her uncontrollable giggling. It was the early days in our COVID-19 quarantine in a daunting stage 3 drug trial that lasted thirty-four 10-day cycles 4 weeks apart at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. And that joyful memory, for me, marked the beginning of a new love (for all things chimpanzees love) that immediately sustained a greater quickening level of compassion in Marya and I also am certain that by virtually hanging out with and financially supporting her chimps have added precious living years to her real life, not counting her relentless, medically challenging schedule.

When I asked to sponsor this special Friday the Thirteenth, it was to commemorate the 98th anniversary of that first Friday the Thirteenth in October 1967.  That was a magical day. We were classmates who spent time together on a field trip in St. Petersburg in her first year at Florida Presbyterian College. I knew we were falling into love by sunset of that first day of our forever life together. She was 17 years old, and I was 19. It took us 6 months on Good Friday April 12, 1968, until our first kiss, standing on the seawall of our beach front campus, where we had walked so that I could share the news that my granddaddy had just died, where we found ourselves with tears streaming down both our cheeks, kissing. When we were married on the last day of January in 1970 and moved off campus, I was 21 and Marya was 19. The short story is I have a list of all those 98 celebrations of Friday the Thirteenths, including today which happens to be the only 13th Friday in 2025.

After our 14.5 year honeymoon when we didn’t even have a fight or even spend a night apart, at one point we found our separate paths in schools, where she got a PhD in Psychology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, while I became a Licensed Unity Teacher at Unity School of Christianity in Unity Village (near Kansas City). Skip 56 years ahead to 2023 which was how long it took for that momentous 1967 calendar to be identical. We chose to renew our wedding vows on Friday the Thirteenth in October, 2023. And by then I’d gotten to hear about Jamie and her fashion statements. Marya even sent her a scarf, and it was an awesome moment when Marya saw Jamie wearing it on a video, not that Jamie was her favorite, but the scarf was not all that brought her to tears. There’s Burrito who had a near death experience taking a snakebite to guard his group, or the chimp who had spent decades in a laboratory and, when given a chance, she went straight up to top of a tree like she’d been doing it every day.

I saw that brief video where the chimps were gathered saying their goodbyes to Jody and was brought to tears when the one elder, who I call Grandmother Shaman, stretched out her arm and scooped up to heaven the spirit of one who was, as Marya said, “Called Back”) and all the countless chimps’ names who were written on the back of the inside of Marya’s heart, who touched her heart truly and deeply (as other human way showers: Hildegard of Bingen, Mother Teresa, Matthew Fox, Richard Rohr, David Whyte, Robert Bly, Mirabai Starr), that she kept prayer vigil with in silent unity, in that fierce and tender love that inhabits the soul, to hold safe and protect from harm, centered, from the heart of compassion for all sentient beings.

At this point, I can hear Marya, as she has so many times over the 5 decades we’ve been swapping stories, saying something gentle like: “That’s enough context already, you’d best be getting to your point.” Mostly always, I’d keep going for a bit, knowing it was risky because my “chipmonk” ways might take a wrong turn and I’d drive a Hertz truck dead-end into a cornfield (like when we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway moving to Princeton Theological Seminary), but not wanting her to lose patience, I will pick up the pace (especially since I am writing) before I hear the final stern suggestion, “Just spit it out, I already know what you’re going to say.” Truth be told, today is not about the miracle journey, daily now moment to moment walk with my left foot named gratitude and my right step called answered prayer (that’d be a chapter book anyway), it’s really all about Jamie’s group and synchronicity.

We made it to Fred Hutch Cancer Care fifth floor on time for blood and platelets infusions the morning of December 10, 2024. Marya’s blood pressure dropped while already holding hands with her nurses she trusted the most before the emergency response team came, and she took the first ambulance ride of her life to UW Medical Center, got a room for the night which we all agreed she might not make it through, but we had a six hour bubble, after the machines were turned off, when we were able to say everything we needed to say that was on our hearts and then some.

Two things: We knew this was a 13th Friday month, and she said, “You have to call Diana at the Sanctuary.”

And the next day, she waited for me, conscious, peaceful, radiant, and when I arrived to say, “I’m here. I love you. Never in my whole life have I seen you so beautiful,” she couldn’t see or speak, but she gave me a smirk, that meant she let me have the last word. You see, Marya’s courage was a great soul of forgiveness and grace, when it came down to letting go, such a one who laid her body down four or five breaths after that last word, beautiful, that she left me, quietly at 6:44p, with my heart full of a joy unspeakable, eventually, in a month or so, a turtle named sorrow waltzed in to inhabit my heart also, and a comfortable time after that, a loneliness, I’d never known the likes of before in my whole life, evolved into a peaceful solitary freedom.

Skip to New Year’s Day morning when Diana returned my call on her day off. It was a long call because she had only seen Marya once on a zoom and she had no idea (and wanted to hear about it all) that Marya was an ovarian cancer survivor since 2003, that chemo knocked out the second recurrence that had reached stage four in 2017, or that it was MDS a blood cancer that slowly turned into leukemia when the drug trial ended.

Near the end of our call, I was describing the significance of Friday the Thirteenths, she paused the call, came back and said, “Just wanted to make sure I was right, and that the arrival of Jamie’s group at the Sanctuary was Friday, June 13, 2008. We’ve had one 6th Anniversary in 2014, and we’re planning a 17th Anniversary this year in June.”

Of course, Marya never mentioned our lifelong 13th Friday celebrations to Diana, but Marya would’ve dearly loved to have known this serendipity of Jamie’s group intake. So today it has been a distinct honor to share in Marya’s Chimpanzee Sanctuary Legacy, to connect some of the dots for you to know why I just had to request to sponsor this special day, on so many levels.

What this day is all about, for Marya and me, is how we never know how connected or related we are as a family, beyond our births and our deaths, or another way to say it, that we may mostly always know who touches our heart, but we will usually never know how many hearts our one heart has touched, or the difference we make to everyone who’s path coincides with our own in the living years.

Filed Under: Chimp histories, Negra, Sponsor-a-day, Terry Tagged With: friday the 13th, friday the thirteenth, in memory, marya barey, Sponsor-a-day

Lucky Friday the 13th and thoughts on being a caregiver

June 2, 2025 by Diana 6 Comments

Katelyn’s blog post yesterday perfectly previewed the month of June, which is full of celebrations!

I just happened to get a couple of blog-worthy videos of twin-birthday-chimpanzees Negra and Terry and thought I would combine them into one post (not to overlook Dora and Honey B’s special days coming up even sooner).

I have also been thinking about all that goes into caregiving lately, and how it is easy to forget the thousands of ways that we can and do contribute to the well being of those in our care. So, I asked the volunteers and staff yesterday to think about a moment in their day that stood out or an overall observation of how they helped fulfill the mission of the sanctuary and to write it down for me.

The themes that emerged were: contributing to a larger team effort, being a positive influence and presence for others (humans and chimpanzees), providing the chimps with comfort (like making sure the chimps have clean blankets), and doing something extra for an individual chimpanzee (for example, making Burrito belly laugh at breakfast or putting together special “surprise box” enrichment for George).

I loved learning what caregivers noticed about the important ways they contributed to the sanctuary in a given day.

What really got me thinking about all of this was watching Negra react to Elizabeth, as captured in the video.

At the time, Elizabeth didn’t know I was above watching (and filming) thinking to myself, “how incredibly lovely is it that Negra has friends like Elizabeth who will dance for her?!”

And how lovely it is that the sanctuary has you all reading this and watching the video?! ❤️

Filed Under: Caregivers, Latest Videos, Negra, Sanctuary, Terry, Volunteers Tagged With: caregiver, elizabeth, mission moments, volunteer

George, meet George

May 25, 2025 by Diana 15 Comments

Last month, the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (NAPSA) held a fun little contest for a sanctuary to win a brand new Looky Lou enrichment mirror and feeder that was generously donated by Wildlife Toybox.

We won the contest because Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest donors are always so generous and caring!

Today, Ellen was George’s caregiver today and she set it up to see how George would react. He was very interested, as you can see from the video she took!

Thanks to NAPSA, Wildlife Toybox, and our donors for enriching George’s life!

Every day, he seems to be coming more and more out of his shell as he relaxes at the sanctuary. It’s a joy to see him get more comfortable and to hear stories from all of the caregivers each day.

Filed Under: Caregivers, Enrichment, George, Intelligence, Latest Videos Tagged With: Enrichment, george, looky lou, mirror, self recognition, video, wildlife toybox

Welcome to Sanctuary, George

May 21, 2025 by Diana 50 Comments

I sent out an email this morning about our HUGE news. You all got it, right? If not, get yourself signed up for the e-news now.

We’ve been holding onto this news for a little while, and it’s been tough not to let you all in on the information.

You know we share almost everything as it happens, so holding onto such a big secret has felt strange. But, we did not want to do anything to interfere with the ongoing investigations and removal of animals at West Coast Game Park Safari in Bandon, Oregon.

I know you are interested in learning everything about George and seeing more photos and videos of him. We are still getting to know him, and we are following strict protocols during the first phase of his quarantine, limiting his exposure to caregivers and keeping everything for him separate from the other chimpanzees.

Huge shout-out to all of the caregivers who carefully prepared for his arrival and have been doting on him when he wants attention and letting him be when he doesn’t. He has a lot of new friends here who look forward to giving him a whole bunch of “firsts” in the coming months.

You know that caring for chimpanzees is an unpredictable and expensive endeavor, and I hope that you will make a welcome donation for George to go towards his care.

I have known about George for a long time. He was born at Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife (no relation to Steve Martin the comedian). When he was just over a year old, he was used for posed photos at a casino. He spent a few years as one of many (over a dozen!) young chimpanzees used as the “star” of a long-running television show in Germany called Unser Charly (Our Charly).

Nothing about George’s infancy or childhood was normal for a chimpanzee. Once trainer Steve Martin and the television show had no more use for him, George was sent to West Coast Game Park Safari.

Like I mentioned in the email I sent out this morning, we can’t say anything about the conditions there that we observed firsthand (yet), but there’s a lot of information out publicly about the many USDA violations this roadside zoo has racked up over the years (helpful note: you can view inspection reports for any facility with a USDA license by using the search function on this page).

George replaced a previous male, Sam, who was taught to smoke. Sam passed away at the roadside zoo and George arrived in 2011, joining a female chimpanzee there named Daphne who had lived with Sam. Daphne died in November, 2023 and George has lived by himself ever since.

The Bandon game park is one many roadside zoos across the United States. Or it was… until last week.

I know that many of you in Coos County have been reporting your concerns about the animals there, and have gotten to know George. Animal welfare and animal rights organizations and rescues have spoken out in the hopes that action would be taken. The authorities that we worked with to get George out of there were full of compassion and allowed us to make sure that George was safe.

We want to thank all of you for all of your efforts and your concerns and for joining us in welcoming him.

More about George soon!

Filed Under: Chimp histories, Fundraising, George, Sanctuary, Thanks Tagged With: animal trainer, george, steve martin working wildlife, west coast game park

So Many Friends

May 18, 2025 by Diana 4 Comments

It’s been quite the busy weekend! Central Washington University held a Legacy in Every Gesture: Celebrating CWU’s Primate Program, which included a day of events. including the dedication of a memorial honoring Washoe, Tatu, Moja, Dar, and Loulis, the chimpanzees who lived on campus and began CWU’s primate program.

Many of the staff here began our careers in the primate program, and the weekend’s events were significant to us. We are grateful for CWU President Jim Wohlpart and First Lady Sasha Wohlpart for truly honoring Washoe and her family and for bringing together people who had connections to the program over a thirty year span together this weekend.

Roger and Debbie Fouts, the founders of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute who advocated for chimpanzees well before others in their field did, attended the events and were honored throughout the day. It was wonderful to see them again. Crickette Sanz gave a moving speech that told her story of working for Washoe, starting as a CWU undergraduate student, and how that led her to establishing the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project in northern Republic of Congo, where, among other things, they use noninvasive technology to monitor the chimpanzees, resulting in new discoveries about their ecology and behavior and illustrating how important it is to support the protection of the dwindling populations of chimpanzees in the wild.

Ron Dotzauer, former trustee, told the story of how the innovative building for the chimpanzees came to fruition, thanks to some political savvy and people in high positions who cared about animals. The chimpanzees, of course, no longer live on campus. Tatu and Loulis are at the Fauna Foundation in Quebec, and the site where their home was is now dorms. Dorms that now have a memorial in front that remembers the chimpanzees who once lived there.

We were glad to be able to host some of the attendees, including friends we hadn’t seen in decades, for a visit to the sanctuary the next day. Then it was off to Dru Bru for a successful and fun pint night fundraiser that the Primate Awareness Network organized!

The chimpanzees were very interested in the visitors. Terry spent the most time outside quietly observing everyone, and Jamie demanded to see everyone’s footwear.

 

These photos are not from this weekend, but I feel they fit in with the uplifting feeling that the weekend’s events and connecting with old and new friends manifested.

Negra at the top of Young’s Hill:

Burrito on Carlene’s Tower under the trees:

Gordo enjoying some corn:

Terry observing:

Jamie exploring:

Filed Under: Burrito, Free-living chimps, Gordo, Negra, Terry, The Bray, Young's Hill Tagged With: central washington university, President Wohlpart, primate awareness network, roger fouts, visitors

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