Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.
The quality of the video above is not the greatest. But what’s contained in it is so uplifting. Seeing chimpanzees do something they’ve never had the chance to do before, and celebrating that with each other, is what it’s all about.
All of the chimpanzees in Cy’s group were bred as a means to a human end – to be used in biomedical research. And now look at them, living their own lives.
Thank you all for being a part of this new sanctuary life and all the adventures in their future!
Today, Mother’s Day, is when we celebrate Jody’s birthday. Though she is no longer physically with us, we held a celebration in her honor for all of the other chimpanzees, and they thoroughly enjoyed the watermelon bowl themed party (photos to follow).
As I was taking photos of Jody’s group during their watermelon bowl forage, I noticed that Missy had gone to the spot where we planted lilac bushes and trees. The spot where Jody is now buried.
It’s very probably that Missy was checking the area to see if she missed some food, but I like to think she was also saying happy birthday to her friend:
Thank you to everyone who have sponsored days and made donations in Jody’s honor and who have sent us amazing heartfelt cards and messages of condolence. I love hearing how people were touched by her life and her death.
Today, we made some changes to Jody’s page on our website to include a donation link to give specifically in memory of Jody for those who wish to do so.
If you scroll to the bottom of Jody’s page, you can see that it is open for comments, so please do feel free to leave a message their about Jody or in her memory. We really appreciate how many people are grieving for her.
Now for those watermelon bowl photos…
Annie:
Foxie:
Jamie:
Burrito:
Dora:
The bovines also had a great day! They were released onto the upper pasture for spring grazing!
Tobin sponsored today in honor of Jody’s birthday celebration prior to us losing Jody just two weeks ago. Ever thoughtful, Tobin sent in a new message to share on this celebratory but also somber day,
Dear Friends of our beloved Jody:
As was the tradition at the CSNW, Jody’s birthday was celebrated every year on Mother’s Day. Those of us who loved her and rejoiced in her very being will continue to do so, in our hearts, minds, and souls. As we grieve, let us remember the look of joy on her beautifully expressive face, whether ascending the towers on Young’s Hill or in foraging the bounty of her land. Let us remember her maternal devotion to Negra, Annie, Missy, Foxie, Jamie, and Burrito. Taken from her mother in infancy, and deprived of nurturing the children she conceived, Jody became the den mother to her troop of orphans.
In my original statement for Jody’s birthday, I had written an open letter addressed to her. I told her that I hoped that the lilacs would be in bloom for her birthday, and I told her that I was so pleased when, somehow, she would appear in my dreams.
As I have read the many messages in the comments section of the Sanctuary website, I have been moved by the many words of condolence to Jody’s survivors and caregivers. One message especially holds meaning to me: “May her memory be blessed.”
Surely our memories of Jody are blessed, as we who love her were blessed by her presence in our lives.
And when I read of that Hebrew blessing, I thought of Jody and the words of a poem, also written in Hebrew:
For Thou, the Giver of Life,
created me in my inmost being;
Thou created me together
in my mother’s wombWhere can I go from Thy Spirit?
Our beloved Jody, your memory is blessed.
– Tobin Kerry –
It was a beautiful day for a lilac forage.
We have said it before and will continue to thank everyone for the outpouring of messages honoring Jody and our shared grieving.
Today’s sponsor-a-day is also in memory of Jody, but not by someone who has been following the sanctuary for a long time. Here is the message from Cheryl Davis:
In memory of sweet Jody. Until two days ago I did not know about Jody or the sanctuary. Thank you for caring for her, loving her and all the other chimps.
Thank you, Cheryl, for taking the time to learn about Jody and the sanctuary and for being moved to make a donation dedicated to her. I can’t seem to find the words to articulate how heartening it is to know that Jody continues, in her passing, to capture the hearts of caring people.
I keep thinking back to these two photos we took of Jody the very first day she first arrived at the sanctuary when she was 33 years old.
The first one shows why we described Jody and everyone in her group as “aging in reverse” these last 15 years.
The second one really moves me, because Jody became known for her GIANT nests, and was not afraid of taking up space, but on that first day, she took just two blankets and made the tightest little nest around her.
What a privilege to have been able to watch and share as Jody embraced her sanctuary life and lived each day to the fullest. Thank you again, Cheryl, for being moved enough to sponsor this day in her honor and memory.
I’m so sorry to share that Jody passed away last night (see yesterday’s blog post). Physically, she was surrounded by people – in human and chimpanzee form – who loved her deeply. In an even more profound way, she was surrounded by the love from all of you who were thinking of her.
These circumstances of her passing were in stark contrast to the decades she spent as a biomedical research subject, which we outline on her biography page.
It has been such an honor and privilege to have been able to share the last almost fifteen years of Jody’s life through the lens of hope, love, and home at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. We made this video about Jody six years ago, and I have watched it multiple times since last night.
Jody was an incredible friend and, in many ways, the center of her social group. After she passed, we were able to give her chimpanzee family the opportunity to be with her body. I imagine that we will be sharing more about this later, as it was beautiful to witness them, in their own ways, say goodbye.
A friend, Thyra Rutter (Arte for Elephants), who I became connected to when she reached out a few years ago about donating her drawing of Jody below, recently recommended Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, No Death, No Fear, which I bought immediately after seeing her post about the book. There are so many lessons within his writing to contemplate.
One is the notion, the reality, of impermanence. He writes, “Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible.” He explains the concept of inter-being: because everything is connected, all things are constantly influencing each other and therefore are not separate.
This idea is what I keep thinking about this morning. We will not see Jody in the chimp house today or any day following today. That is the painfully difficult part of grieving. But Jody is not gone. She is within everyone who has known her. Because of this blog, she is present in people far away who have never met her, and people who perhaps today are just meeting her for the first time by reading this. We will greatly miss her physical presence, and we will continue to work to make Jody and all of the chimpanzees at the sanctuary live on. Their existence and their stories are important. Thank you for being a part of her life.
Today is my 50th birthday, and originally I was going to post about that milestone, the last 15 years of my life at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, and the GiveBIG fundraiser that ends on May 3rd.
Unfortunately, I have some other, more challenging news, to share with you all.
Jody was found not moving in one of the front rooms on her side of the building. Dr. Erin was able to do an exam quickly and we obtained x-rays and drew blood, but these did not tell us what exactly is going on. You can imagine, if you know Erin at all, that she has been on the phone constantly, consulting with veterinarians and human doctors across the continent and trying to arrange for an MRI and spinal tap for poor JoJo. Her symptoms are consistent with a cervical spinal injury. There was not a conflict and no obvious signs that she fell (though we can’t rule that out), so it’s possible there’s just something happening within her body that is impacting her spine. An MRI will tell us more, and we hope to get her to an amazing clinic Tuesday morning if not earlier.
I know everyone who just read those words are absorbing a lot right now. I’m so sorry. I know how much you care and that this is not what you want to be learning about today.
This is one of the hardest aspects of caring for anyone, and there are things about caring for captive chimpanzees that make these situations more challenging. It’s very difficult to see Jody in this state. She is a strong-willed, independent, no-nonsense chimpanzee who, I think, would be happy to have never met a human being, and now she is dependent on us in ways that she never could have or wanted to imagine. That’s not to say that she doesn’t have friendships with the humans in her life. She does. Us humans are doing everything we can to convey to her that all we want to do is help, and to comfort her in ways that continue to respect her independence and dignity and show our love to her, Jody, the chimpanzee person we know.
We don’t have enough information to provide a definitive prognosis or to answer the many questions you probably have.
We know of many other chimpanzees in sanctuary settings who have been in a similar states and made partial or even full recoveries. For this reason, and because we have seen the indomitable will of chimpanzees in action before, we are cautiously holding onto some hope.
Jody is a 47 year old chimpanzee who has embraced the last fifteen years of her sanctuary life with her eyes wide open in wonder and her arms full of sanctuary abundance – be that blankets or food foraged from Young’s Hill. Please think of her this way.
And definitely do consider making a GiveBIG donation in her honor. It seems almost crass to suggest that, but the reality is that your donations provide Jody with the care that she needs. Without donors, Jody would not have had the last fifteen years that she was afforded at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. There’s a reason we chose the image below as our main GiveBIG image this year. Just look at how much happiness she was experiencing as the camera shutter clicked when this image was taken:
Here are some more Jody moments that supporters made possible:
