Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.

camera

The Christmas in July Celebration

by

I have to admit, with temperatures pushing 100 degrees it’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit. But after receiving dozens of items from our wish list over the past week, you can’t help but feel the spirit of giving in the air.

web_Missy_christmas_july_stocking_GH_aw_IMG_4729

We’re so grateful for the support you’ve shown us – you helped stock our shelves with office and cleaning supplies; you gave us new medical equipment so that we can keep the chimps healthy; you sent food and treats for the chimps to enjoy and toys and enrichment to keep them occupied; and you gave us two gently used GoPro cameras so that we can give you a different perspective on life at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. We are truly humbled and grateful for your generosity.

This morning, we collected many of the items we’ve received so far and threw a little party for the chimps. I hope you can see the difference you make in their lives.

By the way, if you sent an item from our wish list and you don’t hear from us in a reasonable amount of time, please drop us a note. Packages from Amazon don’t always include information about the donor and we’d love to be able to thank you!

Merry Christmas in July!

Chimpanzees: Always Curious

by

It’s important to have priorities in life, and the chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are good at deciding what is top priority (usually food) and what is a close ranking second, as you’ll see in the video below.

Here’s what the back of the lower mount for the GoPro camera looks like. I caught this photo last week of Annie standing next to it. The steel mount, custom made by J.B., has a hinge and opens up to slip the camera in and then has a padlock to secure it.

Annie looking at GoPro mount

Jamie and Foxie vs the GoPro

by

If you follow the sanctuary on Facebook, you’ll know that this is posting a bit later than usual because Jamie decided she wanted to take several post-dinner walks around Young’s Hill tonight.

It’s a beautiful end-of-summer evening, so of course I could not refuse the request. Once she was satisfied, I came back in to review the footage the GoPro captured this morning.

The GoPro revealed that Jamie had quite the day. She spent a good 30 minutes on the termite mound, then decided to check out the GoPro camera, which is securely locked in a steel casing (you’ll see why below). Foxie took her turn at the camera too.

Sill image Jamie reaching for GoPro

 

Making the “chimp cam”

by

We’re so excited to finally be able to share the “chimp cam” videos with everyone and we’re grateful to King 5 News for introducing the chimps to some new people.

Many of you had questions about the new camera, so we put together this video (with some new footage of the chimps!) to show you how it was made. We were able to purchase the camera thanks to a fundraising drive launched by our wonderful blog readers, and volunteers Jakob, Jessy, Rachel, Adrienne, and Janna helped us install the cameras on Young’s Hill.

Unfortunately, the camera won’t allow us to stream live video on the internet. We are still limited by our poor internet connection (that’s life in the country) and, with the size of our enclosures, you wouldn’t see the chimps very often unless we had a lot of cameras (unlike the popular bird’s nest cameras). But we’re always looking for new ways to share the chimps’ lives with you, so we hope to have some more surprises in the future.

Help us go pro

by

UPDATE: We’ve reached our goal! Thanks so much – we look forward to trying out this new camera soon.

Supporters Candy and Kathy have started a mini-fundraising drive to help us purchase the GoPro camera that is on our Amazon wishlist. A GoPro is a small high definition video camera that is rugged and waterproof. We’re hoping that once the snow melts, we can mount it on a fence post and capture some interesting video of the chimps on Young’s Hill.

Thanks to Candy and Kathy, we’re already halfway to our goal of $200. If you like to help us reach our goal, you can donate and let us know that you’d like your donation to go towards the new camera.

New camera!

by

The chimps aren’t the only ones receiving gifts this holiday season. Our Board of Directors has generously donated the digital SLR camera from our wishlist. It’s similar to Diana’s personal camera that we have been using, but it has the added capability of recording video.

Because it accepts all of the same zoom lenses, we can now film the chimps in areas of the building that were previously out of range for the point and shoot camera. Plus it will allow us to get great close up video when they are roaming their two-acre enclosure this summer. Take a look: