Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Another busy day (for the humans)

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It’s been another extra busy day in the chimp house for the humans with unexpected occurrences and cleaning to navigate in addition to the usual. Which of course still means the usual for the chimpanzees: doing whatever strikes their fancy every moment of the day. Just as it should be.

Jody and Annie spent the afternoon luxuriating in the greenhouse, grooming one another:

And if you’re Foxie, it’s just looking fabulous because you were born that way:

Here’s a bonus short story about Jamie and her never-ending ability to amaze us. We were in the midst of cleaning the playroom this morning when Jamie got my attention and had me follow her (immediately!) to the frontroom that the trash can sits across from. She immediately climbed up onto the food chute and frantically gestured for me to show her the trash contents. Well, this was new! But it didn’t take long for me to realize that some of her valued reading material had mistakenly (per Jamie) been throw away during cleaning. So I found myself dumpster diving for Jamie. Rifling through a can full of papers to see what she might be thinking of, holding up each page and getting her nod of approval or her gesture to keep looking. In the end, we found what she’d been missing: two magazine pages of cowboy boots and *GASP*, her beloved Dwell magazine! Whew! Crisis averted. I adore her.

Summertime and the Chimps are Living Freely

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We had a very busy day at the Sanctuary today! Luckily I was able to snap a few photos this morning. I hope you enjoy these on this wonderful Saturday!

Sweet sweet Annie:

Neggie enjoying the summer morning sun:

Wonderful Jody:

You can barley see Missy in the tall grass:

Jamie enjoyed her morning supervising:

And Foxie let Jamie borrow her new Strawberry Shortcake doll:

I could look at Burrito all day:

I mean look at this dreamboat:

Happy Solstice!

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Dylan Most sponsored this beautiful day in celebration of the summer solstice (or winter as the case may be 🙂 )!

Dylan, thank you so much for helping the chimpanzees welcome this lovely time of year at the sanctuary! We love these glorious days of chimpanzees hidden in the wilds of Young’s Hill amid the tall, green grass, afternoons spent lounging in the sun-filled greenhouse and air filled with birdsong and flowers.

Whether your summer or winter, we hope all of you enjoy the particular beauty found in the season just as you make possible for the chimpanzees:

Negra:

Annie:

Mr. and Ms. Bluebird:

Foxie:

Jody:

Burrito:

Missy:

Video: A Day in the Life

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We were really busy last week preparing for our big event in Seattle. HOOT! 2019 was a great success, due to the staff and volunteers who put in hours and hours over the last year preparing and planning, plus the staff and volunteers who gave it their all at the event on Saturday.

But the gala is just a small part of what they do. This video is a look at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest that provides a glimpse into all that goes into a day of sanctuary.

We’re sorry we were so busy last week to not give #SanctuaryCaregiverDay its due. The sanctuary would be NOTHING without paid and volunteer caregivers. So, please watch this video and thank them for all of their hard work. We appreciate them so much!

Organizing!

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As the chimps lounged around…

The humans did some organizing! We’ve got just a couple of months to get ready for the arrival of our newest sanctuary members. If you haven’t heard the BIG news yet, make sure to check out this blog post!

We recently received a new fridge from a generous donor/volunteer. Getting a new fridge in the building is always a challenge, luckily we have lots of willing volunteers to lend a hand or two.

The second fridge took its place in the kitchen across from the other fridge. We will have some more mouths to feed here pretty soon!

And the enrichment moved out of the kitchen and into our new laundry/enrichment room!

The only thing we’re missing in this space is a new washer/dryer for our second group of chimps… If you’re interested in becoming our washer/dryer donor angel, you can find the set we are looking for on our Amazon Wishlist.

Beauty of Sanctuary

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As a caregiver, especially if you are the one in charge of the schedule it is crucial to try to keep to it, but it’s also important to remember things don’t always go as planned. You learn to be flexible. That is kind of the beauty of a sanctuary. For example, I couldn’t get all the chimps to shift how I would have planned today. Missy stayed in the playroom, the rest of the chimps were in a front room or out in the Green House for breakfast, so I couldn’t close anything off to clean. You might see my dilemma, eventually it all worked out. However, the chimps got to make their own choice and when you think about that, it’s pretty awesome.

A few pictures of Jody looking radiant in the Green House:

Negra napping with a little smirk:

Foxie and those little toes: