Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Ellie / Buttons the Elk: Story and Update

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This post fulfills two things:
1) My long-held desire to present the tale of Buttons/Ellie the Elk as a children’s story
2) Answering your inquires from this post about what happened to our elk friend (scroll to the bottom of the story for that update)

Buttons The Magical Elk

Once upon a time, there was an elk who stood apart from her species.

She grew up an orphan, adopting humans as her herd. They named her Buttons.

She was a very curious elk and not easily frightened.

When she was about two years old, she wandered away from the farm where she grew up.

She discovered very interesting animals living at a property nearby.

Who would have guessed there was a chimpanzee sanctuary in the neighborhood?!

The chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest were curious about this new visitor and sometimes walked together around their outdoor habitat on opposite sides of the fence.

Jamie and Ellie bottom of Young's Hill

The humans at the sanctuary loved her. They called her Ellie, not knowing she had been named Buttons.

What a treat to have such an unusual companion!

She did cause quite a bit of mischief, however…

She wandered further and further away from her childhood home, finding more human friends in a nearby village, having many adventures, and causing more mischief.

She was an elk, after all. A large, powerful, wild animal.

Not a dog.

Nor a cat.

Nor a cow.

Her human friends worried about her future.

Shouldn’t she be with others of her kind?

One day, a small herd of wild elk passed through the sanctuary property. Her sanctuary human friends hoped Ellie would join them and discover the life of an elk. But, alas, Ellie ignored the other elk and stayed put.

Word of the magical elk traveled throughout the land, gaining the attention of officials who became concerned.

She was far too comfortable around humans, even those she did not know.

Something could go wrong. She could easily hurt someone. Someone could hurt her.

An officer in charge of wildlife decided it was finally time to find a new home for Buttons. But where?

Officer Scott knew there were elk nearby who stayed in one spot for the winter, so his team put Buttons on a trailer and moved her to this herd.

Some of her human friends in the village were very worried and even mad.

Why would they take Buttons away from her home and the people who loved her?

Her human friends at the sanctuary hoped for the best – the chance for Ellie to be an elk.

She didn’t know how to be an elk in such a big group, though. She stayed away from them and searched for a way out.

Officer Scott looked high and low for other options for Buttons. A place for her to be herself and be safe.

The sanctuary humans offered to keep her at the sanctuary, but knew that would mean she would be an elk of one and not able to wander far.

Officer Scott heard from the zoo over the tall mountains – they had a small group of elk and could take Buttons!

Buttons/Ellie had another chance to be an elk! There was even a male in the group, Goodwyn. How would Buttons react to a male of her species in a small group?

A year and a half later, the sanctuary humans asked the zoo humans how Buttons/Ellie was doing, and this is what they said:

The Roosevelt elk (cows Willow and Lily) hang out together and the Rocky Mountain elk (bull Goodwyn and Buttons) are seen mostly together. Buttons, now being the oldest of the cows, is the dominant female and enjoys pushing those young cows around. During this rut season, Goodwyn seems to direct his attention to Buttons (he’s had a vasectomy, so there will be no baby elk).

Buttons continues to be a blessing to keeper staff in her willingness to shift and engage with us. She loves her afternoon carrots and leaf eater biscuit “cookies.”

Even though Buttons was raised with people and interacted mostly with people, she certainly knows elk language and behavior, and is confident in our little herd.

Buttons had found her home. A place where she could be her mischievous self but also live with others like her.

The zoo humans even shared some beautiful photos of her at her Woodland Park Zoo home:

photo credit: John Loughlin/Woodland Park Zoo
photo credit: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo
photo credit: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo
photo credit: John Loughlin/Woodland Park Zoo
photo credit: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo

 

Not long ago, as the sun was rapidly sinking, the sanctuary humans heard strange animal calls near the property. Sounds they had never heard before.

It was the loud cries of bull elk calling back and forth across the valley! The sanctuary humans rushed quietly up the hill, squinting to try to see in the dark.

When they got to the spot where Ellie used to walk on the other side of the fence with the chimpanzees, they heard heavy breathing and pounding hoofs and saw the shadowy figures of dozens of elk running through the woods.

They wondered if these elk were Ellie’s original family.

They wondered what her life would have been like if she had been able to stay in the wild.

But they know, like the chimpanzees they care for, that sometimes wild animals can’t go back to the wild.

Sometimes the happy ending isn’t perfect, but it’s still happy.

Another New Start for Ellie/Buttons the Elk & Cautiously Adventurous Foxie

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You may have read J.B.’s post last month about our neighborhood elk and her new chance to live a life in the wild. Well, to no one’s great surprise, she did not take to the wild life.

Yesterday, Ellie the elk was moved to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle where, after a quarantine period, she will be introduced to two females and a male elk (with two more females to join soon from Northwest Trek). There were several stories about the move in the local press, because Ellie (better known as Buttons) is quite the celebrity. I thought the story in the Yakima Herald contained the most information.

It’s never a happy day when a wild animal is put into captivity, but she was clearly not adapting to the truly wild life. In an ideal world, Ellie wouldn’t have faced that choice so late in life, but she did. She was at the mercy of those who are tasked with handling wildlife – in this case, the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. In many situations with a habituated wild adult animal, the animal is put down. Scott McCorquodale of WDFW, however, went out of his way to find a different solution for Ellie.

We are happy that the zoo agreed to make a home for her where she will have another chance to be with her own kind and where her many human friends can keep tabs on her. Wouldn’t it be great if more zoos were able to provide homes for animals like Ellie?

We are REALLY hoping it works out for her, and we remain available to help if she’s not able to integrate with the elk at the zoo. There’s a small celebration for Ellie/Buttons on March 27th for anyone who’s local. Here’s the Facebook page about the event.

Below is a video from 2014 of Jamie and Ellie:

In chimpanzee-specific news, the chimps, as I suspect many humans in the area, were outside this morning enjoying what genuinely felt like spring!

To set the scene, when I opened the door to give the chimpanzees access to Young’s Hill, Missy raced outside with Annie, Foxie, Jody and Burrito following her (Jamie and Negra remained in the greenhouse finishing their breakfast). All five of them walked the full path around the perimeter, which was clear of snow thanks to J.B. plowing a few weeks ago.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, I spotted Foxie and Burrito coming down the other side and saw that Foxie was thinking about veering off the path well-traveled onto the hard-packed snow.

She checked in with Burrito, but he was not interested in this adventure and continued on.

Foxie is known to be simultaneously adventurous and cautious, so she wasn’t about to just nonchalantly stroll onto the icy snow. She needed to test it out by first punching it and then putting just some of her weight on it.

When she was satisfied that it could hold her full body weight, she took a couple of tentative steps:

Jody, in the meantime, was watching all of this from below. Jody, being the manager/den mother of the group, seemed a little concerned. I’m not sure if it was because Foxie was the last one still up the hill or if Jody thought Foxie’s steps onto the snow were ill conceived.

In any case, Jody went up to collect Foxie, and Foxie obliged by following her back down the hill – on the proper path.

A new start for Ellie

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Ellie is off to start a new life.

Seven years ago, we were graced with this most unusual visitor. As we sat with a small group of supporters in the sanctuary’s old barn, an elk walked in, took an apple off the table, and proceeded to chew everyone’s hair. We were stunned.

We didn’t know it at the time, but this elk had been orphaned shortly after birth and raised at a neighboring ranch. As she matured, she began to wander farther and farther from the ranch until she stumbled upon our sanctuary.

Not knowing her history, we named her Ellie. We would later find out that she had been named Buttons by those who raised her.

Ellie is a wild animal in that she is not a member of a domesticated species, but behaviorally she is as far from a wild elk as could be. To call her tame would be an understatement. She would stare at us through the window as we sat in the house. We had to change a doorknob after repeatedly finding her in the garage in the middle of the night eating dog food out of the can. We fenced off our back yard to keep her from taking food off of the picnic table and fenced off the front yard to keep her from antagonizing our dogs. She was so close to figuring out how to open the sliding door to the office. It was a never-ending battle – nothing was safe from Ellie and no place was secure.

Despite the challenges of living with an elk, she became a part of our sanctuary family. She was a fixture at the chimp house and seemed to enjoy watching the chimps frolic on Young’s Hill. Sometimes she would even join the chimps on perimeter walks. And she loved visitors more than anything. For Ellie, every UPS delivery or propane tank fill-up was a social occasion. We discouraged contact with Ellie to reduce her comfort around humans but no-contact policies with elk only work if the elk are in on the deal. Try telling a pushy 400-lb elk to keep her distance and you will realize that she is the one who makes the rules.

Throughout the years we agonized over what could be done for Ellie. As interesting as it was for us to have her around, this was no life for an elk. We wished that she would have been placed with a licensed wildlife rehabilitator from the start but that opportunity had passed. Early on we had hoped that she would voluntarily join a passing elk herd but she showed no interest in other elk. We looked into placing her at a wildlife park with no success. We feared her catching the attention of the Department of Fish and Wildlife because they had a policy of euthanizing deer and elk that had become habituated to humans. Given the limited options available, it seemed that letting Ellie be Ellie was the best and perhaps only possible course. This was the only life she knew, and somehow it seemed to work for her. Then again, what do we know about elk?

Unfortunately, over the last couple of winters Ellie began crossing the river to a small neighborhood on the opposite ridge. She was welcomed there, but more people and more homes meant more attention and more opportunities to get into trouble. Apparently, Fish & Wildlife was notified and felt they had to do something to protect her and the local residents, so last week they darted Ellie and relocated her to an area 30 miles south where there is an elk feeding station and a herd of 700 elk. We don’t know if she will find a place in a herd but we have no choice at this point but to be hopeful.

Many people in our county are outraged that Ellie was taken away. I honestly don’t know what the right answer is. She was loved and celebrated by this community but she was also intimidating at times and potentially dangerous. She is an elk that should be living with a herd but she is also a unique individual that declined opportunities to do so in the past. In many ways her experience is a lot like that of the chimps. Biologically an elk, raised by humans, but not of either tribe.

Much of this county will be following Ellie’s saga closely and the Department of Fish & Wildlife has promised to evaluate how well she has acclimated to her new environment later this year. We can only hope that she succeeds. Godspeed, Ellie – you will be missed.