Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
We are very grateful to be able to throw such fun parties for the chimpanzees! It’s all because of the people in their lives who care – people who have personally known the chimpanzees for years and those who only recently were introduced to the sanctuary online.
A giant thank you to each and every person who makes sanctuary a reality for these incredibly deserving individuals, including the bovines who got their first taste of some new alfalfa today!
Gordo’s playful side is really coming out! And he continues to enjoy the never-ending trough of snow.
It seems to have been a while since the last time we did a Chimp ID from the new group. So who better to pickup where we left off than with Terry!
Terry is by far the “floofiest” of the bunch. It’s took the point where sometimes we have difficulty in determining if he is piloerect, or if he’s just that fuzzy.
Terry always tries to get caregivers’ attention. You can hear Terry pretty much anywhere blowing raspberries to get some attention from caregivers. When Terry is interested in your footwear, he will blow raspberries then spit water at your boots and only your boots, which he loves to groom.
He also has a peculiar way of greeting caregivers: licking the back of our hands.
Terry is also a big fan of food!
Usually, we can often find Terry with something in his mouth. Whether that is a wadge made from the paper bags his primate chow come in or wooden blocks.
Terry is also a fan of food puzzles, especially Boomer Balls.
Terry is just a big, lovable goofball who is extremely difficult not to love when you meet him.
We all love Terry!
I could listen to the crunching sounds of lunch all day!
We humans talk about weather a lot, often marveling at even the predictable and banal. Like me today remarking at the wind gusts, “that’s some wind out there!”
The weather ties everyone to nature, even those who live in jungles made of concrete. It reminds us that we are not, in fact, in control of everything.
After a long and dry summer here at the sanctuary, the fall rains and cloud-filled days felt abrupt and at times a little oppressive. But the plants almost immediately showed their gratitude, making parts of the landscape look like a second spring. The grass sprung from the ground and the grazing animals filled their bellies with this earthly gift.
Today, the skies were clear and the sun bathed the landscape, quickly urging yesterday’s snow to feed the plants some more.
Even the chimps seemed to be operating under the rules of spring, with Jamie insisting I go on two walks with her in a row. One where five other chimpanzees joined, and one that was just the two of us.
On this second walk, with the warm rays of the sun tempering the wind, Jamie was in no hurry. She stopped to inspect a new log placed to brace one of the structures, and then sat on an outpost of that structure, gazing over her kingdom.
As I waited for her signal to continue, I marveled at the signs of plant life emerging amid summer’s leftover debris.
Jamie had me bring one of her new favorite boots on the walk with her. Luckily, she allowed me to wear my own boots and, instead, carry her star-spangled treasure.
As we continued on our walk, I kept looking at the ground and was surprised to see a brazen dandelion in bloom, another reminder of all the plant life under the surface, at the ready for the right conditions to show itself.
When I returned to the chimp house, I looked at the raspberry bushes and noticed new growth, taking one last giant photosynthetic gulp of the season.
Going around to see the six chimpanzees who arrived just shy of five months ago, I found them too soaking in the sun in the shelter of their newly paneled greenhouse.
It’s a little funny that we refer to these areas as greenhouses, a term usually reserved for shelters that allow plants to thrive even when the outside conditions wouldn’t allow the same, and not generally used to refer to shelters for nature’s more mobile kingdom. Today, however, the term seemed more than apt.
While not photosynthesizing, the chimpanzees were certainly soaking in the sun and perhaps storing some energy for future use.
Recently, I came across an old video that I narrated that mentioned how rare it was to hear Burrito laughing, and I was surprised.
Wait… Burrito didn’t laugh?!
I searched the blog and found more references to this phenomenon, like this one from as late as 2010, two years after he arrived at the sanctuary with his six groupmates.
Burrito’s laughter reverberates his side of the building frequently now. It’s really hard to believe that wasn’t always the case.
I even quizzed J.B. and he didn’t remember a time when Burrito didn’t laugh.
I talked to former staff member and current volunteer Elizabeth, who took the above video today during a volunteer shift, and she also couldn’t remember a silently-playful Burrito. We did both vaguely remember speculating that Burrito would put his hand or objects in his mouth to muffle the sound of his laughter.
We’re glad Burrito found his (laughing) voice.
Here’s a bonus photo from today of Gordo, Rayne, and Dora. It made me laugh.
All sixteen of the chimpanzees now at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest began their lives or spent decades in biomedical research.
If you are subscribed to our e-newsletter, you should have received an email yesterday (https://chimpsnw.salsalabs.org/novemberupdates) with some sad news for chimpanzees who are just as deserving of a sanctuary life away from laboratories.
While there was promising progress for a number of years getting chimpanzees out of research laboratories and into sanctuaries, there have been some very disturbing decisions by the NIH in the last few years that have left over 90 chimpanzees still in labs.
As the newsletter suggested, one action you can take right now is to reach out to your representatives. Animal Protection of New Mexico makes this easy. Senator Kennedy in Louisiana is speaking out publicly about these decisions and more members of congress should join him.
We’ll be sharing more information about this in the coming weeks.
How lucky are we all that we have Lucky Chimpanzee in our lives now?! As Katelyn described, she is a gentle soul with an ineffable charm.
Her lunch forage, as seen in the video above, also included cherry tomatoes, of course, as we have noticed that is one of her favorite foods. We didn’t get a lot of video or photos of Lucky because she, Rayne and Dora enjoyed the party upstairs while “the boys” partied on the first floor
I love these photos that Kelsi took after the party because they are so sweet and because I know she had to go to some lengths to take the photos through the upstairs window to that playroom.
Lucky is the chimp puddle in the front of the photo below, with Terry far left, Dora far right, Cy behind Lucky, and Rayne’s foot in the right corner:
Lucky and Rayne:
Rayne sleeping off that oatmeal:
Thanks goes to Chad for the party plans, Dr. Erin for the oatmeal idea, Kelsi, Anna, J.B. and Lizz for pulling off simultaneous parties in different parts of the sanctuary, and also to Paulette once again for sponsoring Lucky’s special day.
