Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

animal rescue

Honey B and the Sandbox

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As you can see, I “caught” Honey B in the sandbaox when I turned the corner. I love how many different things she tries with the sand.

For you blog readers, who are invested in the sanctuary on a deeper level than those who might just see a video we post on social media once in a while, I’m curious to hear your reaction to the statement I included within the video.

We are always discussing how to put sanctuary life into context and attempting to avoid inadvertently sending the wrong message about “cute” chimpanzees that might elicit the desire to own primates as pets. I refer you to this post by Anthony from over a year ago.

We’re really glad this issue is coming up more and more in our field, and I’m sure we will be reconsidering things we’ve posted in the past and doing more of these explanations within our posts, like we do on Instagram now too. Let us know your thoughts!

I hope you all were able to take the time to dig into something new today too, like Honey B.

If you haven’t already, check out the beginning of our online auction and don’t forget to tune in to the virtual Queen’s Brunch event in just a couple of weeks on June 13th!

image: queens brunch

Daily Smile

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If you saw our Instagram post yesterday, you saw some of this video. Here’s the longer version. This should definitely put a smile on your face!

Spring’s Bounty

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These past couple of days have been a whirlwind of seasons. On Sunday, the weather hit nearly 85º. Then yesterday the temperatures dropped into the 60s and we had a brief stint of rain. Today, the weather is in the low 50s with strong winds. By the end of the week it’s supposed to climb back into the 80s. As I watched the Group of Seven explore Young’s Hill this morning, it finally hit me. With these sporadic days of high temperatures, could this be Summer trying break through Spring’s hold? There is only a month left of Spring before Summer begins. Then I found some supporting evidence that Spring is in it’s final month.

As I was cleaning the Greenhouse, there was a grave yard of goat’s beard dandelions. As some of you know, goat’s beard dandelions are one of Missy’s favorite Spring time treats. Goat’s beard bloom from May to June, so the window to forage for them is relatively small. Though I did see Missy go out on Young’s Hill several times today, I hadn’t put two and two together yet. It wasn’t until I saw Jody race around the Hill grabbing whatever dandelion and prickly lettuce was within arms reach, that I realized we are in peak Spring. Neither wind nor rain nor heat will seem to stop them from enjoying the plentiful Spring bounty Young’s Hill is currently offering.

Here are some photos of Jody gathering some dandelions and prickly lettuce on Young’s Hill then enjoying them in the Greenhouse:

Bonus Photos:

Missy eating her sweet potato during lunch.
Burrito with Dora the Explorer.
Mave watching and waiting for breakfast to come out.

A PAN-tastic Group of Humans

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It’s now been well over a year since we began the “new normal” style of sanctuary operations.

The objective of these changes has been to mitigate the risk of transmitting COVID-19 to the chimpanzees. Of course, the nuclear staff cannot stop interacting with the chimps entirely, so we’ve found other ways to meet their daily needs while maintaining a bubble of safety around them. To facilitate this social “quarantine,” we had to sadly cancel many on-site initiatives powered by our extended community of volunteers, interns, and local supporters.

The need for social distancing hasn’t stopped these people from contributing to the organization on a Major-League level, though.

In a recent blog post, Diana described the remarkable work that our volunteer corps is continuing to do during the pandemic. We know that many of the volunteers and interns would be helping at to take care of the chimps if public health conditions allowed for it, but they’ve found ways to help the sanctuary regardless. Take that, SARS-CoV-2!

Today’s blog is dedicated to the members of Central Washington University’s Primate Awareness Network (PAN), who have provided crucial support this year by planning creative and fun events for the sanctuary. This year, they arranged an art contest and exhibition at Gallery One in Ellensburg and a smash fundraiser at Dru Bru’s new taproom in Cle Elum. They did all this while hosting a virtual primatology conference, collecting enrichment materials for the chimps from locations around town, helping CSNW staff to enter welfare data into the sanctuary’s new database, and continuing their mission of advocating for primate conservation and welfare via social media outreach. Given all they’ve done for us, the least we can do is to thank this year’s PAN cohort of Ashton, Calvin, Carson, Courtney A., Courtney G., Danna, Jenna, Kelsie, Malcolm, Margaux, Riley and Sydney for all their dedication and enthusiasm.

(To learn more about the Primate Awareness Network, check them out on Facebook or @cwu_primate on Instagram and Twitter. You can see flyers and photos from a couple of their recent events below!)

In addition to heartfelt appreciation, we owe some of them cheerful congratulations as well. They’ve all been advancing their respective research projects outside the sanctuary despite the turmoil of the past year, and all of them are embarking on new adventures, including (but not limited to):

Ashton recently co-authored a paper about COVID-19’s effect on wildlife in the journal Mammal Review and began working at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado.
(Fun Fact: CSNW board member Dr. Lori Sheeran is Ashton’s advisor and also co-authored the paper!)

Carson has been accepted into the Applied Anthropology doctoral program at Texas State University where she will study the microbial ecology of free-ranging chimpanzees in Africa.

Jenna has just accepted a full-time caregiver position at fellow NAPSA member sanctuary Center for Great Apes in Florida and will be starting in June.

Riley, after he defends his graduate thesis, will be getting married this summer!
(Jenna suggested I link to his registry but we don’t want to mix it up with our own Wish List, causing Riley and his partner to receive enrichment puzzles and cleaning supplies while the chimps get new bed linens and cookware.)

It’s sad to watch this cohort of students move on without a proper farewell at the sanctuary, but we’re excited to see the places they will go, the things they will do, and the people they will become. Hopefully, local conditions keep trending in the right direction so that we can gradually incorporate volunteers, interns and visitors back into our routine without increasing the risk to the chimps and staff. For now, we’re just happy to express our gratitude for these people and the time they’ve donated to the sanctuary!

The Challenging Ones

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There’s something I deeply respect about non-humans who are reserved. The ones who would never just give away their affection to whoever passes by.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pups I’ve never met who run up to me like I’m a long-lost friend or chimpanzees who immediately want to play with strangers.

But for animals I expect to have a long-term relationship, I’m drawn to the aloof. The stand-offish. Even the disgruntled. Those who demand you earn their affection, because they deserve no less.

This is what first won me over with Negra.

She is not happy-go-lucky. She’s not one to seek out the attention of caregivers for a game or just to hang out. She’s the Queen, after all.

I’ve started to go through videos of Negra taken over the last 13 years to put together a video compilation for the Queen’s Brunch next month. It’s really great to revisit and be able to relive those moments with Negra where she allowed me or another caregiver to be a friend. It’s going to be difficult to whittle down the clips, but I hope you appreciate the video when we show it on June 13th.

JB grooms Negra's belly
Negra presenting her belly for J.B.

Jamie, unlike Negra, constantly seeks out the humans, but interactions are almost always 100% on her terms. She knows what she wants from us (usually some variation of walking around Young’s Hill), and she expects us to comply.

Today, she indicated that she wanted me to walk around the hill shortly after we had put out a lunch forage. I dutifully started the routine on the human-side of the fence. Instead of continuing the walk, however, Jamie planted herself in a fire hose hammock partway up the hill. I know from previous experience that she expected me to wait for her. Or maybe today she just wanted to be the subject of a photo shoot.

Missy, as we’ve said many times on the blog before, is a “chimps’ chimp”. She seems to view the humans as peripheral to her social circle. We serve a purpose in bringing her tomatoes, but most of the time she’s not looking for anything more than that from us. This is why it is always special when she spots a caregiver from a distance, gives a look, and takes off for a game of chase. Or when she comes up to the caging where a caregiver is sitting, turns around, and presses her back up, allowing, for a short while, the caregiver to groom her.

I don’t have photos of that from today, but I do have these photos of Missy gathering the bulk of the lilacs that Anna carefully placed in the treat rock.

Our dog Honey B was very much aloof. If you know dog breeds and I say she was a Chow Chow, you likely have some idea of her personality. If you are suddenly confused why we had a dog named Honey B before there was a chimpanzee at the sanctuary named Honey B, I direct you to this blog post that tells the unlikely story of the direct connection of these two.

Honey B the dog in 2011 standing near what became Young’s Hill, the outdoor habitat for the chimpanzees.

Honey B the dog had no time for anyone’s nonsense, so the fact that she chose to bestow her attention on me was a huge gift. Still, I had to work for her affection and respect her boundaries every step of the way.

There’s another nonhuman at the sanctuary right now who has similar qualities: Honey Cow.

Little by little, she is warming up to her caregivers. Yesterday, she was lying down in the sun, and I sat in front of her. I was sure she was going to get up when I reached out and touched her head. She half-heartedly swung away, but she stayed. One of these days, maybe one of us will completely win her over. On her terms.

Another Mother’s Day for Jody

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It’s Mother’s Day.

At the sanctuary, our celebration of this special day always includes a birthday party for Jody. Her actual date of birth is missing from her original records, but the date aligns with both Jody’s history as a biological mother and her honorary status as the group’s “den mother.”

Like Jody, Annie, Foxie, Missy and Negra (four of the sanctuary’s eight female chimps) also had offspring during their tenure as “breeders” in the laboratory. Altogether, we believe they gave birth to at least twenty-five infants. The newborns were each taken from them shortly after birth by the company that owned the chimps, and the separated infants were destined to be raised by humans in nurseries and sold as biomedical research subjects. At the time, this was a life sentence for chimps.

As advocates began to successfully pressure the laboratories to retire their captive chimpanzees from research, some of the aforementioned offspring were lucky enough to find sanctuary homes. In fact, Missy’s daughter Honey B found her way to CSNW thirteen years after her mother- almost three decades after they were pulled apart at birth. The two don’t seem to recognize each other or have any special bond, which is unsurprising given that chimpanzee social bonds are maintained through lifelong interaction and communication, not mere genetic relatedness or physical likeness. Still, they sometimes behave in ways that reveal some similarities that may be more than just coincidence, giving a bit of magic to their familial relationship.

I won’t add much more since we have written about this topic in the past and I feel like other staff could offer more heartfelt and insightful perspectives than mine. All I have to say is that, as someone who watches Jody interact with her companions and surroundings on a daily basis, she is a natural protector and shepherd to all around her.

Jody would have been an excellent mother to those nine children. She got robbed of that experience, and so did they.

The gravity of that injustice cannot be expressed through any words that I know.

The best that we can do now is provide Jody and her friends with a safe and comfortable sanctuary home, with opportunities to live a fulfilling life, and tirelessly advocate for non-humans who are still being exploited elsewhere.

So, on this well-deserved Mother’s Day, we celebrated not just Jody but all the mothers in our lives who have helped us to grow, learn, and live meaningful lives. We’re thankful that you exist and we love you all.

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Finally, since I was unable to take many photos while filming the embedded video, Chad was willing to share some images he captured of the big event!

Annie:

Jody:

Missy:

Burrito:

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P.S. Just in case you missed the usual title pun, I almost named this post “JO Mother, Where Art Thou?” but decided to keep it a bit more serious this week. I’ll think of something really corny for the next post. I promise.

they’re called playrooms for a reason

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Or maybe they should be called multi-purpose rooms?

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed watching these clips over and over!

I had many technical difficulties with computers and software today, so you are seeing this video after a great deal of perseverance. I almost gave up a few times, but I’m pretty stubborn.

I was thinking of you all in my stubbornness. I wanted to deliver some quality footage of the Californians in part of the new playroom space. It’s fun to be able to film through the windows for those close-up views, even when Willy B videobombs the camera.