Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Animal Welfare

Dinner Nook

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We’ve been exploring some pretty big topics lately. Earlier this week I emailed the link to those who registered for the recorded discussion with Jen Feuerstein on introductions/merging groups of chimpanzees, and yesterday J.B. shared his thoughts on the difficult topic of chimpanzee medical procedures.

As a departure from those deep dives into some of the bigger challenges of caring for chimpanzees in captivity, today’s blog post is just a little story from today’s day of sanctuary.

Many of the chimpanzees have favorite dining spots, places where they take their food to enjoy at their leisure. In the greenhouse, Jamie makes a a dining nook out of the smallest and highest windowsill between the greenhouse and the playroom. When I was spot-cleaning the playroom tonight, I found Jamie happily eating dinner in her nook. Though it’s not the easiest place to get to from the ground level where Sofía had served the chimps, Jamie had managed to bring the haul of food to the sill.

One huge advantage that Jamie has being the boss of her group is that she can temporarily abandon her food and generally remain confident that no one will take it. Actually, a lot of conflicts start in her group when someone else attempts to take food that Jamie has either been given directly or that she has decided belongs to her. To Jamie, taking food is a very big misstep that requires an immediate and dramatic reaction, even if, in all fairness, it was not clear that the food was hers. If you live with Jamie, it’s safest to assume everything belongs to her and proceed with caution if you see food that appears to be available for the taking.

Tonight, while in her nook, Jamie spotted a piece of beet on the lower platform, so she left her dinner behind to retrieve it. No one came near her food or the beet that she had claimed.

So she was free to get the bonus beet and traverse back to her nook to finish dining.

As I was closing up for the day, Jamie was motioning urgently to get my attention. When she had effectively secured by gaze, she gestured again and then ran into the greenhouse. I had already locked the human door that gave me access to the outside, but she was very insistent, so I unlocked. I expected that she wanted me to deliver her some snow, but as soon as I entered the human portion of the greenhouse, I saw that there were two pieces of rutabaga on the human side of the mesh outside of her reach. I picked them up and gave them to her, and she rewarded my obedience with a very happy moan before climbing back up to her nook with her second helping.

We Meet Again

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There were a lot of familiar meetings today.

First, Honey B and Lucky had a meeting with each other. Though things started off slow when they came together, they did eventually did start playing.

As some of you know, Honey B can be dialed to 11 when she plays, Lucky is usually at a 7 on a good day.

All-in-all, their meeting was pretty positive and they seemed to enjoy each others company.

On the other side of the building, the weather finally provided us a break to be able to shovel parts of Young’s Hill. After a few hours of digging out Young’s Hill from the Snowmageddon snowfall by Sam, Anna, Diana, and J.B., Jamie and her group were finally able to go out onto Young’s Hill!

Jamie with Burrito behind her.
Missy in Neggie’s Cabin.
Jody seemingly happy with her harvest of snowy treats.
Annie bipedally walking through one of the pathways.
Burrito taking in the sights of Young’s Hill.

Here are some bonus photos from the day:

Rayne and Dora grooming in their greenhouse.
Gordo looking as handsome as ever in his greenhouse.

Honey B(adger) Don’t Care

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As many of you know, we’ve been working around Honey B’s odd preferences this winter. She’s a strong-willed individual who voraciously defends her zone of control (which Willy B will attest to). Whatever everyone’s plans are for the day, she has a tendency to shake them up.

Today, Honey B brought more of that same energy.

As she frequently does, Honey declined to shift into the playroom and greenhouse after we cleaned them this morning. Instead, she opted to remain in her beloved front rooms, thus preventing us from servicing them all simultaneously. She watched indifferently as the others rushed out into the larger enclosures.

We’re not sure why Honey B chooses to stay in the smaller rooms; we’ve discussed several hypotheses, all of them equally plausible. Perhaps she prefers cozy spaces, enjoys watching the caregivers clean around her, or appreciates a few moments of seclusion from the other chimps. It’s also possible that she simply likes to introduce a little neutral chaos into our otherwise organized routine. We’ve seen her do just that on multiple occasions.

Whatever her reasoning may be, it’s interesting to watch how this mischievous chimp spends her time apart from the group. Today, she literally hung out in Front Room 7 as I swept, sprayed, scrubbed, rinsed and squeegeed the adjacent areas.

For the first few minutes, Honey B playfully swung on the firehose vines and made an earnest effort to dismantle the fasteners holding them together. Then, she found a toy brush to sweep some nut shells into a small pile. After that, she made a nest in the corner and lounged peacefully as I added fresh blankets and enrichment items to the other rooms.

As far as chimpanzee personalities go, Honey B is definitely on the more human-oriented end of the spectrum. Fortunately, she is also relatively well-adjusted to sharing space with familiar chimps. When I reunited her with her companions after cleaning the rest of their spaces, Honey B politely greeted Mave and Willy B before carrying on with her business elsewhere. All the residents of that wing enjoyed lunch service in their usual configuration and then dispersed out to the playrooms and greenhouses for some afternoon grooming.

Now, as I’m putting the finishing touches on this blog post, I keep glancing over at the new monitors that show our security camera feed. Honey B was just playfully interacting with Terry across the double barrier that separates their respective greenhouse enclosures. I could tell that it was going well by Terry’s exuberant bounces and head nods. They’ve come quite far from their first meeting, during which Honey B went all “honey badger” on poor unsuspecting Terry.

Whether she’s being asked to shift to another area or being introduced to a new friend, Honey B never lets things get boring around here.

P.S. If you didn’t get the “honey badger” reference and are feeling adventurous, you should do a YouTube search about them. I’m referring to the 2011 video with 98 million views. I’d post the link but the language used in the title is absolutely NSFW and thus not safe for the blog either…

Perspective

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I didn’t have a blog post planned for today. Sometimes when I’m in this blank-slate situation, I look back on the blog at previous years of the same date to see what was happening in the hopes of inspiring an idea.

I chose January 15, 2019 to find out what was up. It was a literal walk down memory lane. Then staff caregiver/now volunteer caregiver Elizabeth gave an immersive behind-the-scenes view into what a morning was like at the sanctuary. The post featured then staff caregiver/now Chimp House Manager Anna with a supporting role from then intern/now Veterinary Assistant Sofía.

Elizabeth described the medical clinic trailer, explaining that it would soon be replaced by the stationary clinic that was a big part of the first phase of the expansion at the sanctuary.

Some things haven’t changed a bit from that post three years ago. Like then, the first thing the lead caregiver does is greet the chimps and work through a brief checklist while breakfast is being prepared. Negra can still almost always be found huddled under a pile of blankets.

Some things have changed a lot, though.

Burrito no longer displays every morning, but that’s not to say that he’s completely mellowed out. Today we witnessed a conflict where he swung and ran throughout his side of the building and chased after Foxie with an impressive amount of agility, determination, and energy (conflicts are a part of chimp life and everyone is fine).

The biggest change, of course, is the number of chimpanzees in this house.

Mave, Willy B, and Honey B arrived in August, five months after that 2019 blog post was written, and Lucky, Cy, Gordo, Rayne, Dora and Terry arrived in June 2021, almost seven months ago from today.

The building has expanded accordingly, with many more spaces for the new chimpanzees to enjoy and for the humans to clean up every day after they’ve been thoroughly enjoyed.

The new playrooms and greenhouses really are chimpanzee playgrounds, but it is quite challenging to get good photos of the chimps immersed in them.

Chimpanzees appreciate being up high, and their spaces were built with that in mind. Rayne in particular spends a lot of her time on the “leaves” of the artificial trees in the playroom.

Dora and Rayne were high up grooming on one of the leaves this afternoon. Normally, I would delete photos like the ones below, but I’m presenting them to show how difficult it is to get good photos of the chimps in these enriching spots.

Meanwhile, Honey B was inviting me to a game of chase in her greenhouse, where, despite the feet of snow outside, the grass and bamboo are still green.

I had to physically count on my fingers to verify that 2019 was just three years ago and to take a moment to appreciate all that supporters of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest have made possible. I’m in awe.

Included in this post is the featured (top) photo of Honey B that I also took today to demonstrate that the camera and the camera person is capable of taking a decent photo.

If the chimpanzees choose to be in private spots of their home that we can’t quite reach with our cameras, that’s okay with us. We can all be certain, even without frequent photographic evidence, that they value every  aspect of their home that’s been carefully designed and built to chimpanzee specification.

Work Hard, Display Hard

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Originally, I planned on writing a blog post for today by following my classic recipe of egregiously bad puns, unnecessary history/science lessons, and some recent photographs of the sanctuary and its residents. In particular, I was going to share a series of images that would convey to everyone just how much snow we have piled around us after “Snomageddon” (and how hard we’re working to keep our paths and entrances clear). I’ve still included those photos here, but Willy B actually stole today’s blog with some mischievous behavior.

Before I elaborate on Willy’s exploits, I’ll have to provide a little context. In the newer wing of the Chimp House, the two former Wildlife Waystation groups reside in two sets of enclosures that essentially mirror each other; this layout enables each group to have access to a playroom, greenhouse, and either the mezzanine or front rooms for most of the day. We try to briefly close the chimps out of each area for daily cleaning, sometimes requiring us to play a weird version of Rush Hour to get things done. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with different strategies when I’m responsible for operating doors and shifting chimps around, and I have had some luck with a new shifting pattern in recent weeks. With all that promise, it was only a matter of time before I fell on my own sword.

This morning, everything initially went well and all the chimps shifted for breakfast. Amid the second round of shifting, during which Honey B usually decides to employ the filibuster to stall our caregiver agenda, it was actually Willy B who derailed my plans.

I had just successfully rotated Honey B, Mave and Willy B into the clean front rooms and invited the six chimps in the neighboring group to cross over from one playroom to the other. In that moment, Willy grabbed one of the bulky rocker toys in Front Room 5 and started drumming on it, causing the whole building to quake with every hit.

Chimps are generally quite preoccupied with their neighbors and are susceptible to social contagion (scientists call this combination the “Neighbor Effect“), so you can imagine the pandemonium that can evolve from one chimp’s abrasive behavior. In today’s case, the whole sanctuary stopped what they were doing to monitor Willy’s incessant banging with the utmost concern. With so much to be worried about, the six chimps in Cy’s group milled around the accessible spaces, occasionally responding with short outbursts of their own while completely ignoring my invitation to switch playrooms. Still, Willy B kept beating on the available surfaces at the expense of our eardrums.

It’s known that chimpanzees display for various reasons (to influence their group members, advertise their fitness, express their emotional state, cope with tension, etc.), but its difficult to identify a clear motive for any single occurrence of this behavior. Thus, we can’t know what caused Willy B to ceaselessly drum on the furniture today, but we can attest that he continued to do so for the better part of an hour while we all tried to stave off headaches. Perhaps his ultimate goal was simply to spice the morning up with a bit of mayhem.

Eventually, we were able to entice Cy’s group out of the messy playroom long enough to close it off, but it took quite a while to get to that point. Even once we had safely unlocked the enclosure, we had to clean them to the rhythm of Willy’s clamor. We expected that the display would culminate in some sort of conflict within the social groups, but Mave rescued them all from that fate. Amid a break in the commotion, Mave hooted, bounced over to Willy B, and pant-grunted right in his stoic face. Perhaps Willy had wanted that acknowledgement all along, or maybe he was simply growing tired and Mave had seized the opportunity to interrupt in the only way she knew how. Either way, the submissive pant-grunt punctuated the relentless drumming that was holding us all hostage, bringing Willy’s uproar to an end.

In addition to the embedded video, I’ve included the aforementioned photographs below. Be safe and have a good week, everyone!

J.B. put tire chains on the Gator for improved traction in the snow.
J.B. uses a snow rake to proactively clear some heavy snow from the roof.

What Now?

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Here’s something positive – the chimpanzees are really enjoying the snow snacks that are the result of Snowmageddon 2022!

I tried to get some good photos, but when photo opportunities presented themselves, the chimps were in motion and I only had a cell phone on me. so I only captured the cover photo of this blog post, this blurry image of Foxie who had just retrieved a mouthful of snow from her front rooms and was headed up to the loft in her playroom:

and Gordo who had brought snow from his playroom to the front rooms on that side of the building. He deposited the snow on the floor, and left a bit for Cy to enjoy (see main photo above).

I can’t say that the humans are enjoying the snow quite as much as the chimpanzees right now. Though the last few days have been an adventure, and we’ve certainly laughed a lot, it’s proving to be a logistical challenge to figure out where, exactly, to put all of this stuff. More looms above on the roof, not-so-subtly threatening to upend the progress we’ve made.

Look at the form on Kelsi. Is shoveling an Olympic event? I give her 10/10.

Young’s Hill is inaccessible for a few reasons: 1) there’s so much snow everywhere! The chimps would be chest deep in it, so they have to wait until we can get in there to create a pathway for them.  2) we haven’t yet been able to shovel a pathway for ourselves to the door that opens onto the hill, even if we could let the chimps out. 3) the snow is weighing down the electric fence wires, weakening the system.

More good news, though: we are fully prepared for winter storms. Though it will be a bit before full outdoor access is possible, all of the chimpanzees have lots of indoor space, blankets, toys, food puzzles, movies, and humans plus their partners who drive through the biggest snowstorm in decades to help the onsite staff take care of them.

In addition to all that, they have their indoor/outdoor greenhouses! I’m kicking myself for not getting photos yesterday of the chimpanzees in the new greenhouses (I did get a little video clip of Mave that I posted to our Instagram). We have a new heater that we turned on for an hour or so yesterday, and then the sun kept those tall enclosures warm for the rest of the day. I cleaned the greenhouses this morning and can attest to the fact that they were well used the day before.

All sixteen of the chimpanzees here are the product of very unfortunate circumstances. They shouldn’t be in Cle Elum, Washington. They shouldn’t have been used in medical research. They shouldn’t be in captivity at all. However, given their unfortunate histories, they are extremely fortunate chimpanzees now. And all of us are immensely fortunate to know them.

Even though I can’t shake the feeling that the snow lurking out every window and door is taunting me in some way…

I know it will not last forever. Spring will come, sure as it does every year. We have so much to look forward to as we hunker down and appreciate everything we have, including unlimited snow snacking.

Fantastic B’s And Where To Find Them

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This week has started with a year brand new,

So here is the Eve of Burrito, Part II.

 

The day began as I walked through the gate,

Opening the Chimp House not a second late.

In this community lives magnificent beings,

When you meet them you’re overcome with feelings.

 

But this day in particular I’m looking one,

His name starts with a B and he likes to run.

I head through the door and who do I see?

Why, it’s one of my other friends, Mr Willy B.

“Hey you human! I am glad you are here!

There is a peanut out of reach, right over there!”

“Here you go friend,” I say with a smile,

“I wonder if you could help me all the while?”

“I might, but make it quick!

I have neighbors to rile up and doors to kick!”

Willy B is a big mighty man,

So without hesitation, I told him my plan.

“I’m looking for someone whose name starts with a B,

You’ve met him before, though it was not meant to be.”

He looked at me with a stern look on his face,

Then looked around to survey the entire place.

 

“Ah yes, I know such a person,

They are in the mezzanine, but they can be a diversion.”

Off I went, to the ladder I climbed,

I peeked my head over and who did I spy?

“My sweet Honey B, it’s great to see you,

Could you help me find another friend too?

He’s wild and crazy, and spies all day long,

And just loves Giant Kongs!”

 

“Oh that guy? Last I saw he was in the window,

But he seemed like he was on the go!

It was nice seeing you too, you bum,

Now if you please, I’m quite busy with this gum.”

I race to the Playroom to see my old friend,

But I’m met with a dead end.

The Party Police Enforcement is on patrol,

And she will not let me pass. She is in control.

“Please ma’am,” I beg her.

“I just want to see the fantastic B without causing a stir.”

“You may only pass if you do this one favor.

Let me groom your boots, and enjoy my labor.”

 

No matter who you seek, you have to appease the boss,

No matter the quest, no matter the cost.

She pays exquisite detail to her grooming,

To keep all boots clean. I’m assuming.

 

“The one you seek is in the Greenhouse,

He has not been quiet as a mouse.

Laughing and playing all day,

Sometimes it’s too much, so you will pay.”

 

I thank her for her service and head outside,

I just hope she hasn’t lied.

I open the door to the this indoor-outdoor space,

There was a flash of fur, seemingly in a race!

 

Bronx cheers, stomping and breathy panting,

His knack for fun is really uncanning!

He swings from the platform to the door.

Could I ever ask from more?

“Oh Bubba!” I exclaim.

“There’s something first I want to proclaim!

Tomorrow is your birthday, you’ll be 39!

At that age, you are looking just fine!

“There will be everything that you enjoy,

So please when you see it all, don’t be coy.

There will be slinkies, blocks, chase and spaghetti!

Things will be thrown around like confetti!”

 

“That’s nice and all,” he replied.

“I hope to wake tomorrow and not find out you lied.

But that is all for tomorrow, I’m just focused on now!

So get me some snow, before J.B. gets in the plow!”

I abide his request, and give him a snowball.

One is not enough. He wants it all!

After he savors every last bite of the snowy treat,

It’s off the the races, not one I can defeat.

 

So I hope you all are prepared for tomorrow!

Fun will be had by all, so be sure to follow!

 

Happy Burrito Eve, everybody!

 

Some bonus photos of Mave and Dora!

Mave
Dora