Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimp sanctuary

A Lucky Combination

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We continued with introductions today with Cy, Lucky, Willy B, and Mave. In the beginning, Willy B and Cy had to get out some displays… a lot of displays. It took them about 20 minutes to calm down and start grooming between the mesh. We gave them a few minutes before we opened the door. Any combination that includes Lucky and Mave is one of my personal favorites. Mave and Lucky get along really well and genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s quiet company grooming each other. Even when the boys are displaying before the door opens, Lucky and Mave usually seeks reassurance from each other regardless of who else in a part of the introduction.

Lucky and Mave

Willy B and Lucky aren’t the greatest of acquaintances. In fact, Willy B usually antagonizes Lucky during most of their meetings. But there are some windows of calm between the two.

Mave, Lucky, and Willy B

Then the “bromance” between Willy B and Cy continues. After they got their displays out of their system, they spent the rest of the afternoon grooming and playing. We could hear their laughs through out the whole Chimp House.

Willy B and Cy grooming

As a bonus, please enjoy these photos I took around the Chimp House today.

Overall, today’s meeting was very positive.

Dora

Cy

Rayne

Annie

Lucky

A celebration from the heart: Cherish the chimpanzees this Valentine’s Day

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Today the chimp house was full of celebratory festivities, and the cattle were frolicking in their pasture on this unusually spring-like February day.

Gordo reaching for a box full of goodies.
The boxes included blood oranges, strawberries, raspberries, and heart-shaped banana oat pancakes, as well as sparkling cider with raspberries.
Enjoying his bounty!

Spring weather always puts me into planning mode. As we’ve mentioned before, we have a very busy summer ahead as we complete new outdoor habitats for the chimpanzees. We’ll also be introducing the cattle to a new area of the property, so there are adventures ahead for everyone!

Betsy, Nutmeg, Honey, and Meredith!

In the past, we’ve had fundraising drives on Valentine’s Day. This year, instead, I wanted you to join me in planning mode. You can give with your heart today while also planning for the future by including CSNW in your estate plan.

With our well-into-maturity chimpanzees, you may wonder what our plans our for the long-term future of the sanctuary.

If you signed up to receive the link to the recording of the conversation I had with Jen Feuerstein about merging groups of chimpanzees (and you made it all the way to the end of that recording!), you know that we are thinking hard and carefully about the next steps for Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Whether than means rescuing more chimpanzees or rescuing smaller species of primates, there is a lot ahead for this sanctuary, well beyond my life, I hope.

Creating an estate plan is definitely an action that comes from the heart, for your loved ones and their future. And it can make a generational impact on the organizations important to you. When you create your will, you’re ensuring the future of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and helping to provide future residents the promise of a sanctuary home.

This free online tool helps you create your will in just 20 minutes so you can secure the future for the human people and the chimpanzee people you love. If you have any non-probate assets not included in your will, you can use this secure tool to designate beneficiaries for those assets and make your plans.

Thank you for making this Valentine’s Day so special.

Annie enjoying the banana oat pancake!

If you’ve already included us in your plans, please fill out this form to let us know; I want to thank you for your kindness!

Other financially clever and more immediate ways to provide hope, love, and home include giving from your IRA or donating your appreciated assets.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the ways that you give your hearts to the chimpanzees and the bovines too.

Dora enjoying here box of goodies!
Willy B grabbing as much as he can in Riverview.
Cy with armfuls of goodie bags!

Names of Sanctuary Spaces that Honor Donors

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When we started the Bring Them Home Campaign for Expansion, I was full of hope for a future that included helping more chimpanzees, but I really wasn’t sure how long it would take to raise the funds needed to expand.

We have been incredibly fortunate to have the support of many dedicated donors who are invested in providing all of the chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest with an enriching loving environment with a variety of things to do and places to explore. Thanks to all of you!

The ongoing campaign includes the opportunity to name specific parts of the expansion for certain significant donations, which was a bit of a new approach for us. We have had some wonderful donors take advantage of this opportunity, and we now have names for the two playrooms and greenhouses that were Phases 2 and 3 of the expansion.

Drum roll, please…

Playroom 2, which is on the east side of the building, closest to the Chute and Courtyard, and connected to the front rooms of the expansion, is named Lupine. The naming opportunity was given as part of a fundraising initiative that included a drawing with a chance to name the space. Longtime local-to-Cle Elum donor Patty Clark wanted to honor her mother, who was known as “the flower lady”, with the name, so together we chose the name of a beautiful native flower, with it’s purple spikes decorating the hillside of the sanctuary each summer.



 

Playroom 3, on the west side of the building closest to the road and the river, and connected to the Mezzanine, was named Marmot Mountain by Monica Best. With her training in wildlife biology, Monica has a great fondness for all local fauna and chose to honor the small and delightful mammals that scurry all over the property in the spring in summer. You might notice a marmot silhouette painted on the wall of this playroom in photos shared on the blog. There’s a chimp-proof window that looks into Marmont Mountain from a human area that we boringly refer to as Mechanical Room 3. That window is a favorite spot for chimps to greet people, like Anna’s daughter Luna.



Greenhouse 2, with its 20-foot-high peak, artificial tree, real bamboo, and views of the hillside and open-top habitat (soon to be multiple habitats) to the east, has been named Oakwood in honor of Oliver Mazner by Karen Emmerman Mazner. Oliver thought about the place he feels the most loved, secure, and at ease—selecting his grandparents’ neighborhood in the Oakwood area of London— to reflect that the chimps are now in just such a place.  A new overhead tunnel being built now will run outside of the building, providing another connection between Oakwood to Lupine and also branch (see what I did there) to the existing Chute, which will open onto the Bray, the new open-top expanse named in honor of James Douglas by his wife Jen.

   

Greenhouse 3 stands equally tall on the west side of the building. The chimpanzees from Wildlife Waystation love lounging on the high benches and the platform of the artificial tree, looking out towards the river and the railroad that runs beside it. Donors Vicky and David Fagerlee allowed the staff to choose a name for this indoor-outdoor space. They appreciated the creative puns often seen in blog titles by Chad and Anthony, but we opted to go for the more literal (but we think still poetic) name: Riverview.

Thank you again to every person who have made these spaces come to life and who will continue to contribute as we continue to add more exciting habitats!

Studio Logs

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Taking portraits of chimpanzees isn’t easy, but knowing how they move around their home makes it a lot easier to catch them at the right moments.

In the past, we’ve described Front Room 4 as “The Portrait Studio.” This small indoor enclosure has three pneumatic doors that allow the chimps to move freely between their greenhouse, playroom, and other front rooms. The area is notably furnished with a couple of wall-mounted platforms, the lower of which provides the perfect bench for curious chimpanzees to look out the window or down the caregiver hallway. When a chimp is sitting in that precise location, the diffuse natural light from the window illuminates their face while softening the background with an effortless vignette. In short, the lighting is ideal for easy portraits.

If you want to see some content from the studio, I recommend checking out these posts featuring the chimps who reside in that wing of the Chimp House: Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy and Negra.

Last week, I encountered Jamie sitting serenely in the studio before breakfast. She was holding the crumpled remains of a hardcover book.

I saw Burrito sitting in the same spot later that morning. Instead of literature, however, Bubba was wielding a broken enrichment puzzle and showing it off like a trophy.

We caregivers have been searching for new ways to photograph and record video of the chimps in the new wing of the building, too. Although there isn’t an exact replica of the Front Room 4 studio on that side, we’ve discovered that the new greenhouse enclosures provide some unique perspectives. When an individual is perched on one of the closer logs, for example, they’re at the perfect height and distance for mid-range portraits. Gordo graciously modeled for the camera in this exact location yesterday afternoon.

We have Gary of Sage Mechanical to thank for these natural enrichment structures. The Sage crew ferried these heavy tree trunks all the way from Gary’s coastal property to the sanctuary with the new greenhouses in mind. They have asked us for pictures and video of the chimps utilizing the logs as bridges; I hope they’re proud to see that the logs are an integral part of our newest photo booth, too.

In case you missed them when they were originally posted, here are some other staff photos of the chimps sitting on the studio logs.

Cy (by J.B.)
Rayne (by Sofia)
Gordo (by Sam)
Terry (by Chad)
Honey B (by Sofia)
Mave (by Chad)

Lucky Calls the Shots

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It is important to be flexible during the introduction process. For example, it has been a while since Cy and Willy B had some one on one time with each other. They have been dying to get some alone time together, but it isn’t always up to the shifting person. Some days you get a Gordo who just waltz into a room, not quite realizing what he might have signed himself up for, but I mean it’s Gordo so you have take the opportunity! Or like today you get a Lucky who simply won’t leave the front rooms. My goal as lead today was to get a “bro date” set up for them. I had it almost all set up, Willy B was alone in the Mezzanine, but I need to get Cy alone in the front rooms. Atlas, with all my best efforts I did not win the shifting battle! There is nothing wrong with Lucky not leaving, it just means a change in plans. So we went up to the Mezzanine to see if anyone would join Willy B for a quad! Honey B politely obliged! We have done this quad before, but it is important to build strong relationships, so repeats of the same intros are just fine! Make sure your volume is on for the video. There is a lot of grooming noises or what we like to call “teeth clacking”!

Hoarfrost

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It’s been a snowy, cold, gloomy January. It’s hard to believe that we had clear weather and bare ground at this time last year (see: Winterspring).

While I love the unpredictable moodiness of Northwest winters, the sporadic windows of sunny weather are welcome reassurances that the valley will eventually see pleasant days again. Last Monday, the sanctuary was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the clear blue beyond for a few minutes, drenching the frozen tundra in warm sunshine.

At the time, the entire sanctuary had been coated with hoarfrost for several days. These feathery deposits of ice are created when fog freezes on cold surfaces, thereby giving them a “hairy” appearance. The phenomenon looks absolutely amazing when illuminated by sunlight and outlined by turquoise skies, and the property’s numerous Ponderosa pines are particularly stunning when adorned with the frosty spikes.

I don’t know if the chimps appreciated the hoarfrost as much as I did, but they definitely seemed to enjoy the sun’s rays. When I went to see what the chimps were up to that afternoon, I found most of them lounging on the elevated platforms in their respective greenhouse enclosures, grooming and snoozing the hours away. Only Dora was interested enough in my presence to shift her gaze, studying my camera and nodding approvingly before rolling back over for another nap.