We had a blast celebrating Valentine’s Day (and World Bonobo Day) yesterday! The chimps had love-themed parties, complete with sparkling juice, cherries, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, purple potatoes, and heart shaped cookies (thanks to our awesome volunteer, Nancy :))! I hope you enjoy the video from yesterday’s festivities, put together by Kelsi!
Valentine’s Day might be behind us, but we’ll take any chance we can to give some individual love to our residents. Today, I want to highlight our sweet, playful, and curious: Annie.
We celebrate Annie’s birthday on September 10th. She was born in 1974, possibly in the wild. She spent over half of her life in biomedical research at the Buckshire Corporation in Pennsylvania before arriving at CSNW on June 13, 2008. When Annie first arrived at CSNW from the lab, she was a very anxious individual. Like Caregiver Elizabeth wrote in this blog from 2015, “Annie was not brimming with confidence when she arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. (This is an understatement.) She had a couple of things working against her: her position at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, and decades of history in research labs during which she lived in fear and frequent pain. She had every reason to believe that the world was not kind.“
Annie, in June of 2008, after arriving at CSNW:
While in biomedical research, Annie was used for hepatitis vaccine studies. She also had several babies during that time- all of whom were taken from her, at just a few days old, and put into research themselves. From the research and records we have, Annie might have had seven children: Mariah and Virgil who live at Save the Chimps (STC) sanctuary in Florida, Damian who lived at STC until his death in 2011; Tobias who was at Chimp Haven sanctuary in Louisiana until his death in 2014; Petra whose last known location was the New Iberia Research Center, but we believe is now deceased; Abby who appears to have died in a biomedical laboratory; and Brooke who we have no records of her whereabouts.
Annie never had the chance to raise her children, but I know that she would have been an attentive, kind, and loving mom if she had had the chance.
Annie with her best friend, Missy:
Annie loves spending time with her BFF, Missy, and is less likely to engage with the humans as much as some of her other group mates (like Jamie and Burrito, for example). She is low ranking in her group and is often pretty focused on being vigilant to avoid any issues in her group.
Annie is known for making her sweet bird-noises, by getting her face wet and putting her hand over her nose and blowing. As an intern, I often thought a bird had found its way into the chimp house, but it was Annie chirping away. One of my favorite things about this is that when she uses water from the lixit to get her face wet, she will often give her face a little wash. The result leaves the hair on top of her head all wet and spiky and sticking straight up, which is just the best.
Annie, mid face-wash-bird-noise:
Annie is also known for her bipedal walk on Young’s Hill when the grass is wet, or tall, or there’s snow on the ground, or it’s muddy… Looking out to see her bipedally walking, with her long arms swinging and her hands kind of angled in, is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
Bipedal Annie:
I adore Annie so much for all these reasons and so many more. I’m sure that I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot about her as I write this today. She still exhibits anxiety and is low ranking in her group, but she has grown so much since arriving at CSNW. She has experienced so much here that has caused her to go outside of her comfort zone (Young’s Hill, the expansion, etc.) and she has taken it all in stride.
She is happy to let others lead the way, but she is a sincere friend and sweet soul. She is more content to hang out with Missy and her chimp family than the humans, and I love her for that. She puts a lot of intentional work into those important relationships and I think that’s something we can all learn from.
When I began staff training, it took a while for me to start having interactions with Annie outside of serving. I remember that being normal, since she’s more of a chimps-chimp. I remember the first time that she came over and gave me a kiss through the caging on the back of my hand, and the first time she asked to groom my boots, and the first time she let me groom her back.
Moments with Annie are intentional and special, and I’m grateful for all of them.
We’re so lucky to know her and we love sharing her story and moments with all of you. Thank you so much to Vicki, Monica, Donna, Sharlene, Sylvia, Susan, Myra, Nancy, Chris & Lee Ann, Judy, and Karla for being Annie’s Chimpanzee Pal’s!
If you love Annie as much as I do, or have a family member that does, consider sponsoring her and become Annie’s Chimpanzee Pal!