Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Animal Welfare

Missy’s Birthday

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Today we celebrated Missy’s 35th Birthday. What a great day! We set the party up first thing this morning and scattered tons of gift bags of goodies from Dick and Robbi, and set up a forage of oranges, peaches, carrots, frozen cantaloupe, and “night bags” (or “breakfast bags”, if you will) of sunflower seeds, which were hidden inside the gift bags. The chimps loved the party and were in excellent moods for the duration of the day!

If you are friends with Missy or any of the Cle Elum Seven chimps on Facebook, you might have seen posts this morning about another birthday fundraiser. It’s not too late to participate- send us a $35 donation and I’ll email a special gift to you and a friend (be sure to put your friend’s email in the gift note section of the donation form). She’s celebrating with her friends, why don’t you celebrate with a friend as well?!

Missy:

Negra enjoying her “breakfast bag”:

Burrito and Foxie enjoying some frozen cantaloupe:

Jamie, in true spirit of a party:

Missy eating a carrot:

Here’s a peek at the party:

Keeping busy

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This is what greeted me when I arrived at the chimp house this morning:

For at least ten minutes, her concentration was so acute that she couldn’t be distracted. Jamie is so busy these days that it’s almost impossible to imagine how she occupied her time during her decades in laboratories with nothing to play with or explore. What a different world this must be for her!

Dodge stands up for chimps

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If you’re a Primate Patrol member or follow the Primate Patrol page on Facebook, you know that Dodge recently altered their advertisement campaign which had included a chimpanzee named Suzie (Suzy).

Dodge took it a step further and released a powerful statement, which included these sentences:

“Dodge is firmly committed to never using great apes in our advertisements again.”

“We are not a company that hides behind issues or brushes them under the rug. We are a company that meets issues head on and moves forward. And we promise to keep doing everything in our power to be one of the most honest and forward-thinking companies out there.”

This morning, Dodge published the link to their statement on their Facebook page. They have received a bit of flack from Dodge enthusiasts who clearly do not appreciate PETA, who Dodge mentions in their statement.

If you’re a Facebook user, please counter these folks by liking the Dodge Facebook page and politely thanking Dodge for indeed being a forward-thinking company on the issue of great apes in entertainment. Corporations can never make everyone happy, but we should praise them when they make compassionate decisions.

My Dodge Neon was the vehicle that Keith and J.B. drove from Pennsylvania to Cle Elum, following the Cle Elum Seven’s journey to freedom over two years ago. So now I have two big reasons to appreciate Dodge.

Argh!

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In case you haven’t heard through all of the chimps’ Facebook status updates (yes, each chimp has their own FB page, which can be found through this link), thanks to volunteer Stephanie Perciful, the chimps had a pirate-themed party yesterday. What an awesome idea! Stephanie did an awesome job (as usual) collecting pirate-themed enrichment for the chimps, so the playroom was covered in buried treasures (e.g. gold beaded necklaces) and skulls and crossbones. Thanks, Steph!