Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

J.B.

A zoo for an elk

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Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is not open to the public like a zoo. In general, we like to give the chimps their privacy. When we do allow visitors, we limit the frequency of the visits and the size of the groups, and we always ensure that the group is guided by a staff member that the chimps know and trust.

But we have one visitor that doesn’t abide by our rules.

Most mornings throughout the spring and summer, Ellie the wild elk can be found laying beneath the visitor shelter, waiting for the chimps to finish their breakfast and head out onto the hill. She seems to enjoy watching them, and they in turn have at least grown accustomed to her. In fact, we have even seen Jamie and Ellie taking a walk together around the hill without us.

Jamie and Ellie:

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Burrito and Ellie:

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Ellie and Jody:

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Ellie, Jamie, and Missy:

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So I guess – just this once! – we’ll make an exception to our visitor policy. It’s not like we could do anything about it anyway…

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The wild and the weird

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When given the opportunity, chimpanzees who have spent their entire lives in laboratory cages can learn to be chimps again.

They can learn to climb, run, leap, and swing:

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They can learn to forage for their own snacks:

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And they can learn to patrol and defend their territory :

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But it takes patience. When you’ve spent your entire life surrounded by concrete and bars, those things can end up providing a certain kind of comfort. It’s what you know. It’s all you’ve ever known.

Little by little, the chimps at CSNW have embraced new opportunities, confronted some of their fears, and found that there was a little more “wild” in them than they may have realized when they were locked up in that laboratory basement.

This year, these changes seem to be happening at an accelerated pace. Burrito has been joining Jamie on her walks around the hill, and even going it alone at times. A couple of weeks ago, Foxie was seen sitting on the shaky bridge – a huge step for someone who has always been afraid of anything not firmly bolted down.

And this morning, we saw almost the entire troop take a walk up the hill together, far away from the building, just for the fun of it.

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But along with patience, you also need understanding. Because these new experiences are adding to who they are, not replacing who they were. Foxie may be exploring new play structures, but she’s relying on Dora more than ever:

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And while Jamie may be walking miles each day around the perimeter of Young’s Hill, she is ever more adamant that we dress in cowboy boots to go along with her. Let me give you an example of how particular she has become: Jamie’s favorite boots for the last few months have been a pair of all black women’s cowboy boots. She insists that her caregivers put them on before heading out on a walk. But some of us, ahem, do not fit easily into women’s boots, no matter how hard we try. That doesn’t concern Jamie. For a while, I tried to fake like I had them on, sticking just my toes in and then pulling my jeans down over them to cover my heels sticking out. No dice. As you put them on, she stares intently to ensure that you are wearing them properly. Heels must be all the way down.

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There are times when I am reminded how crazy this all is – like when we finish up a walk and I return to the entry gate, only to have to strut my stuff across the driveway in ladies boots as the UPS driver unloads packages at the door. They must really wonder what’s going on here.

It’s crazy, but it’s who they are. You can’t erase their past, or what it’s led them to become. And why would you want to? So while we strive to provide more and more “wild” in their lives, we can never stop embracing the weird.

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Breakfast forage

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It was a nice morning for a breakfast forage on Young’s Hill.

Burrito’s first priority in a forage is always chow. He fills his mouth and both hands, and occasionally his feet too, before moving on to other foods like lettuce and smoothie.

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Jody was lucky to find one of the two banana flowers that volunteer Stephanie brought this morning. She carried it with her as she foraged so that she could save the best for last.

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Missy always finds the food that we throw up high into the climbing structures. That’s where she found the other banana flower.

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Foxie is a smoothie fanatic.

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Annie took a few moments to rest on Little Mount St. Helens while she scanned the area for more chow.

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Jamie found the cups of smoothie that we hid at the very top of the hill.

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She was also quite focused on gathering strawberries.

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At first, Negra declined to go outside for the forage, so we gave her a snack in the greenhouse. But we were happy to see her make a brief appearance outside later in the morning.

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Burrito’s big week

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This has been a pretty big week for Burrito.

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Just two days ago, Katelyn wrote about how Burrito has been tagging along when Jamie and her caregivers walk around the hill. It’s a sign of his growing confidence that he’s able to venture further away form the security of the chimp house in the company of other chimps. But yesterday, Burrito decided that he doesn’t even need Jamie’s company anymore. Now he’s the one asking us to go on walks!

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All day long, he’s been trying to capture our attention with playful stomps and head bobs. As soon as we approach, he runs up the hill, waiting just long enough for us to catch up before running off again. You can even hear him laughing as he runs.

Nearly seven years after their release from the lab, and three and a half years since their first experience outdoors, we are still witnessing the chimps grow physically and emotionally.

Burrito even played a lead role in a brief patrol today. This afternoon, an unusual bird call could be heard coming from the woods nearby. Jody was the first to check it out, as she often is. Burrito then walked to the top of the hill to join her.

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At first, Foxie watched from a distance.

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As did Annie.

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But soon a group gathered at the top of the hill, and after a brief investigation, they determined that is was nothing to worry about.

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So Burrito went right back to his new routine.

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I sure hope this continues. I love to see him freely exploring the hill and taking advantage of all of the space that’s available to him. And I’m thrilled that he’s getting so much exercise. But if I’m being honest, there’s one other thing that I’m happy about, for purely selfish reasons:

He doesn’t make us wear cowboy boots.

 

Reassurance

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To follow up on Elizabeth’s post yesterday, here’s a good example of Burrito’s other side – the testosterone-filled Tasmanian Devil side that leaves a path of destruction and screaming girls in its wake. This is the side we usually see when we arrive to work in the morning.

As you’ll see in the video, Annie was the victim of one of Burrito’s drive-by displays this morning. Being a chimpanzee is stressful, but they have some pretty good ways of dealing with that stress. Like hugs, for example.

One thing you might notice in the video is that Annie also seeks reassurance from me and I don’t offer it to her. As hard as it may be to resist in these instances, we make a conscious decision to avoid inserting ourselves into their social conflicts. If Annie was startled by a loud noise, we would gladly offer her a touch with the back of a wrist to help comfort her. But when she’s involved in a social conflict, we risk upsetting the delicate balance in the group if we inject ourselves, even if it’s just to offer reassurance. At these times, the chimps aren’t just looking for emotional support – they may also be looking for political allies or even backup for an ensuing retaliatory fight. So we try to limit our involvement to a polite acknowledgement in the hope that they will work things out amongst each other. And they usually do.

Besides, no one can comfort a chimpanzee better than another chimpanzee.

She’s back…….

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Cle Elum’s favorite elk is on the move again.

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Ellie, as we have named her (others in town also know her as “Button”), is a wild elk that was separated from her herd at a young age. She found a safe haven in the pasture of a nearby ranch, where she helped herself to the hay set out for the horses and cattle throughout the winter. She’s free to come as go as she pleases, since elk can easily jump the fences typically used to contain farm animals. In the warmer months, when food is plentiful, she wanders the Bristol Flats canyon and the side of Lookout Mountain, and because spring came early to the Northwest this year, she decided to venture over to the sanctuary this week for a visit.

She likes to stop by the sanctuary office to check up on us and the cats:

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She also seems to enjoy teasing our dogs. They’ve never met an animal so unmoved by their barking and growling. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

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She greets all visitors to the sanctuary, including unsuspecting repairmen.

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Seeing Ellie is always bittersweet. We’d love to see her rejoin a wild herd, but in the few times they have come back through the canyon, she has either declined to join them or was not accepted. In many ways, she probably has the same kind of identity confusion that we see in cross-fostered chimpanzees (chimps that were raised as if they were human). Perhaps she even sees herself as more cow or horse than elk.

But she certainly enriches the lives of the chimps. When they first saw her two years ago, they tried to scare her away from Young’s Hill. But unlike our dogs, they eventually realized that she wasn’t going anywhere, and now they greet her more with interest than with fear or territoriality.

Sandra, a Level 3 volunteer, was walking around the hill with Jamie yesterday when Ellie decided to make an appearance. She and Debbie put together this video:

Looking for adventure

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Missy was stuck in high gear today.

She tried joining Jamie on her walks but the walks were too slow, so she ran.

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Eventually she gave up on Jamie altogether and just starting running around the hill by herself in the rain.

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When the sun came out, all of the other chimps emerged from the greenhouse to spend time on the hill. She tried enticing Foxie to play by stealing one of her dolls, but Foxie wasn’t rambunctious enough.

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She tried getting Jody to chase her, but Jody couldn’t keep up.

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Missy is like an electron, orbiting around the other chimps as if they were standing still. But once and a while, she comes to a stop and starts looking around…

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…looking for something that will give her an adrenaline fix.

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And when she finds it, she can hardly contain her excitement.

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Look at that smile on her face.

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