When I was gathering photos the other day for the Share the Chimp Love Video, I came across the photo below of Jamie and gasped out loud.
I think it’s been a few years since I saw this image, but it’s very familiar. It was taken in September of 2008, three months after the chimpanzees arrived to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. J.B. posted it to the blog back then.
It was one of the best photo portraits we had of Jamie, and we even used it for some early postcards that we made.
But looking at it now, it’s just not the Jamie of today.
Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes sunken. Her freckles were more pronounced – maybe because they hadn’t darkened from sun exposure yet. And the look in her eyes just wasn’t the determined, curious Jamie that we now know and love.
Compare that before photo with the one I included in the Share the Chimp Love Video, taken last summer:
Or these that I took this morning of Jamie getting the most out of a new book:
