Today is about time flying by and some of the great random moments in the lives of the chimpanzees over the last ten years.
I’ve started and stopped this blog so many times today that I lost count.
There were toys to clean:
Laundry to do:
Amazing interns to train:
Paper braids for evening enrichment to be made (most of which were made by the aforementioned amazing interns):
And of course walks to take. Jamie was in the running mood today, so this quick snapshot was the only halfway decent photo I was able to get on one of our day walks:
Plus a whole host of other daily activities.
And then more walks after dinner! (well after I thought I would have this blog posted).
Courtesy of the unseasonably mild weather and the lengthening days, Jamie did three more walks after her evening meal, with Missy joining her for two of them.
This year’s HOOT! gala on May 19th will celebrate ten years of the Cle Elum Seven chimpanzees living the sanctuary life. TEN YEARS!
We are in the process of a website redesign right now. I’m really excited about a whole new look that highlights the great photos of the chimpanzees and hopefully makes it easy for people to be drawn in and fall in love with them. Here’s a sneak peek:
When the designers were starting to move the data over from the existing site into the new design, they ran into a snag because of the amount of content that we had in the blog. Ten years worth of photos, videos, and stories, it seems, takes up quite a bit of space.
I love that we have this diary of the chimpanzees’ days and the moments that were funny, poignant, and sometimes even mundane.
I remember being a kid and thinking that a week, or even a day (an hour?), was an excruciatingly long time to wait for something. I remember adults saying, “don’t complain – when you get older, time will fly by.”
Never were truer words uttered.
Lately, I feel like I’m in a movie montage – days pass by in seconds, and years are contained in just a minute’s worth of highlights. But then there’s this blog with all of these posts that mark real moments in time over the last several years. Moments that the chimpanzees were living to the fullest. Days that were spent with companionship, favorite foods, boots, trolls, blankets. Years that marked new additions to their home. Almost a decade of exploration into this new life they were given.
Here’s a look back on the last ten years of blog posts for January 20th (or thereabouts – we didn’t always post to the blog every single day – can you imagine!)
January 21, 2008:
January 19, 2009:
January 19, 2010:
January 20, 2011:
January 21, 2012:
January 20, 2013:
January 20, 2014:
January 21, 2015:
January 20, 2016:
January 20, 2017:
And that bring us to today. Happy January 20th to everyone. Thank you for following along!