Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

Today is for Patti Sims!

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Elodie Hagberg sponsored a day to honor her friend Patti Sims on her birthday today.

Most people honored on sponsor-a-day posts are somewhat unknown to us, but that’s not the case with Patti.

Patti has contributed to the hope, love, and home at sanctuary over the last several years as a very hardworking volunteer, doing everything from scrubbing the floors to serving on the HOOT! events committee. We are so grateful for all of her work helping the chimpanzees in many different ways, even through the pandemic. We are so pleased to be able to honor her, thanks to Elodie!

If I can get organized, Patti will be spending part of her birthday helping me get packed for tomorrow’s in-person HOOT! event!

I know Patti would want me to remind you all to get your bids in before the online portion of the auction ends TODAY (Thursday) at 7pm PT / 10pm ET. Throw a few more dollars towards your bids or donations in honor of Patti today, and check out the in-person items to place an absentee bid now.

 

Annie’s 48th Birthday Party

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All of the primates had a great day celebrating Annie (and Kelsi and Adam!) today.

Thank you to Paulette for always remembering the many birthdays at CSNW and sponsoring today for Annie on her 48th birthday. And thanks to Dr. Erin for bringing a load of edible flowers and grape vines!

Along with the always great produce (including edible orchid flowers and banana leaves) from Charlie’s Produce, we also harvested grapes from the vines that grow by the sanctuary caregiver house to round out the birthday forage.

Aside from this photo of Annie I took:

Here are a few other of my favorite photos of the day:

Jody with a sunflower:

Jamie getting every last bit of grape off of a vine, unbothered by the raffle tickets brushing her head:

Security Video of Mall Walkers

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As mentioned on Saturday, I have been working on putting together security camera footage from a couple of weeks ago that captured Honey B and Rayne “mall walking” along with some other fun highlights of that morning. I was able to finally figure out the technical issue with exporting the video, and I wanted to share it with you asap.

I just love that the chimpanzees have their own busy lives completely separate from us humans, and seeing them have so much fun makes all of the anxiety of integrating the two groups well worth it!

Observant watchers will note that the time as shown on the camera footage jumps when the scene switches to the black and white / night vision of the mezzanine. That’s because that particular camera is on a different camera system and the times between the two are about six minutes off. This made it a bit challenging to piece together all of these separate clips.

It would have taken me a really long time to label all of the chimpanzees, so you’ll have to use your best id skills to figure out who is who.

I hope you enjoy this extra long video!

 

Gordo in a Box Saves the Day

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I have a 15 minute long video that I’ve been working on for you all for more than a week, piecing together clips from the security cameras on a particularly busy morning. But, technology is not serving me well, and I’ve been unable to finalize the file for an unknown reason. I showed a very short clip of it during yesterday’s “Insider Briefing” for the Chimpanzees in Need campaign, and now I feel like that was a tremendous tease. Sorry!

It was dinner time and I had been trying to troubleshoot the movie software all day, and I had NO BLOG POST. I was a little panicky. But, don’t worry, Gordo saved me/us.

Yesterday, Gordo wasn’t feeling well and didn’t eat all of his meals, so we’ve been a little concerned. Today, however, he seemed to be back to all of his Gordo ways, including taking his dinner in a box.

This particular box was clear on the other side of the Oakwood Greenhouse, so we had to walk out the door and around the greenhouse to serve him. This is what I saw when I was looking for him from the hallway.

Jenna was able to take these two photos of Gordo finishing off the banana portion of dinner:

I took these while he was eating an onion (yep, the chimps like raw onions!)

We had delayed the handing out of nightbags for his group, and Gordo had gone inside to the front rooms, but he insisted on going all the way back to his box in the greenhouse for the nightbag service:

 

Continued Discussion on Chimpanzee Integrations

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You may remember, several months ago I asked you all if you had additional questions about the integration of the two chimpanzee groups, or integrations in general, for a follow-up discussion I was recording with Jen Feuerstein. I finally put together both parts of the video together, and it’s now public for anyone to view.It’s a long one, but you can skip ahead to the second part if you’ve already seen the first.

We’re always open to answering questions, as you know, so do feel free to ask us anything that we may have left out of the discussion, and we’ll do our best to answer!

Overall, I would just say that for me personally, introductions between chimpanzees is the most stress-inducing thing I’ve voluntarily done. I can’t give enough praise to all of the staff who really made the introductions happen. And to Cy. And, especially, to Jen.

 

What does legacy mean?

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I think about that word a lot. Legacy. What does it mean, exactly? Why do we strive to leave something behind when we pass on, and how do we go about doing that?

While legacy means different things to different people, I think that almost everyone wants make a difference and feel that their life added to the world in some way. I don’t think I could co-run a nonprofit without coming to that conclusion.

I am in the privileged position of seeing, everyday, the generosity and caring within people.

Over the years, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest has been the beneficiary of the last act of generosity from several donors. Some of these donors were very close to the sanctuary. I knew of their health struggles and was aware that they had planned to leave something behind for the chimpanzees. We mourned their passing and have been honored to be a small part of the bigger-than-life legacy they created, which included the uncountable acts of kindness they gave during their living years.

More surprisingly, the sanctuary has also received small bequests from people we were not familiar with at all. They named the sanctuary in their will without having made contact with us. I always try to gather information about these donors to find out more about them as I marvel at their surprise gifts.

I consider bequests in any amount to be very special gifts because they are an expression of the trust in a nonprofit to carry on the legacy of the donor. It’s a responsibility that we take very seriously.

You may already know that August is Make-a-Will Month. For you, blog readers, I wanted to throw out the market-tested appeal language and share the above, my rather raw thoughts, with you.

Whether you name Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in your will or not, I do hope that you will seize the day and create a part of your legacy by sitting down and planning your will if you haven’t already or updating it if you have new causes you’d like to support. You can use this tool to do that. It really is very easy and walks you through all of the steps.

If you have an IRA, 401(k), life insurance policy, or any other asset that your will does not cover, you can plan beneficiaries for those non-probate assets separately. Use Freewill to learn more about how to go about that.

If you’ve already named the sanctuary in your estate planning, you can let us know here, and you will be counted as an official member of the Primate Family Legacy Circle.

Your legacy could make a huge difference for the future of sanctuary or for others you care about.

Thank you.

Terrible Photos of the Day

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I’ve been looking through photos from the previous year this past week, choosing the best of the best for the 2023 calendar. I know, I know, it’s a pretty nice assignment. Everyone who works here takes some really amazing photos!

The photos I took today are most definitely not calendar-worthy. That’s one of the nice things about the blog, though. We don’t have to have technically gorgeous photos or poetic prose every day to let you all in on the goings on of the sanctuary.

With that in mind, please enjoy these terrible photos of the day.

First up, 23-year-old office cat LouLou catching the morning sun:

Meredith literally going against the herd, as she often does:

Jamie post-breakfast:

Rayne was also in an accessorizing mood, but used a scarf for just a bit of cover while taking an afternoon nap:

Gordo doing his Gordo box-sitting thing:

Willy B eating a purple potato for lunch:

The BAF evaporative cooler is here!

It actually caused quite a stir when it was wheeled into the chimp area yesterday. For some reason, Gordo and Dora in particular were quite concerned about the dark monolith and alarm called loud and long enough for me to hear them from the house. They eventually calmed down and only gave it an occasional side glance and spit today.

BIG A** THANKS again to everyone who donated towards its purchase! (We humans need to study the manual before we can give you a full report).