auction item Archives - Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

If you have checked out our HOOT! auction thus far, you may have seen that we have a CSNW 2025 Yearbook for sale! I wanted to spend today’s blog talking more about it.

Back in March, Ellen had made Cy his very own gossip magazine for his birthday. If you haven’t seen the blog that featured that, you can check it out here. This magazine gave me the idea of creating a CSNW yearbook, with the vision of it being a hard-back coffee-table-like book that can preserve special CSNW pictures forever! I asked Ellen to collaborate with me on this and then we were off to brainstorm.

We wanted to keep the true “yearbook feel” so we included a “class” photo page (the one with the individual head shot photos in a row with names under), an autograph page, pages dedicated to each chimpanzee group, individual spotlights and written bios, and even comedic superlatives and “CSNW clubs”.

You may be asking, what is so special about this yearbook? Well, for one, every photo in this book was taken in 2025. Some of the photos haven’t even been featured on the blog yet! Another special thing is that Ellen and I, as two of the chimps’ caregivers, typed every word and put thought into each page, with the hope of depicting each individual chimpanzee and representing each dynamic personality. It’s not just a book that an online site has made and spit out. Ellen and I hand-picked each photo, typed, and placed everything on the screens ourselves. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind keepsake!

We’re hoping the yearbook will be well-received enough to make it an annual thing, documenting all the best moments of each year to come!

You can purchase your own yearbook on our HOOT! auction page here, as well as checking out our other auction items!

It would be rude of me to not provide some type of teaser for you, considering we have only shared the hardback cover so far…

**These are screenshots so the images will be better in the book itself **

Screenshot of Superlative teaser:

Screenshot of Foxie and George page teaser:

Thank you for your support, as always!

Continuing on with our Comfort & Joy online auction thanking, today I would like to thank Melody W. for her winning bid for keys for the chimpanzees.

We are so glad that Enrichment Coordinator Ellen found these keys. We have mentioned before that it is a challenge to find enrichment that is safe and suitable for the chimpanzee group from Wildlife Waystation because certain members of the group (cough, cough, Gordo, cough Dora) will chew on (and, we fear, swallow) plastic, rubber, stuffing from stuffed animals, and some fabrics. That limits the variety of items that we can give them, perhaps more than you would think.

We have an ongoing quest to find material that withstand their impressive canines, and these keys so far have passed the test.

Of course, the main element that you want in enrichment is popularity. It’s not enriching if no one pays any attention to it. This is really where individualized care shines. We know that Foxie is happier when she has her dolls, Cy has his magazines, and Jamie has her boots and books.

Everyone is different and has their favorite things, but certain items have more universal appeal.

We’ve seen these keys in the hands of almost everyone in Cy’s group, and several members of Jamie’s group too!