Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimpanzee sanctuary

The Jamie Boot

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We were so happy to see bright blue skies and sun this morning and most happy for the chimpanzees! Everyone headed onto the hill after breakfast, some shoveling their last servings in before leaving and some taking the last bits to go. Almost everyone went straight for the climbing structures at the top of Young’s Hill. They look so tiny up there:

Missy:

Annie joining Missy:

Foxie and Jody (if you squint you can see that lip of Jo’s!):

Burrito looking cute, as he does:

And then this happened today. As some of you may have read in recent blog posts, Jamie has added another requirement for her walks with her caregivers. Now in addition to us wearing the boot du jour on our walks, we are often asked to carry her beloved boot books and photos of boots with us. Today before going on two walks she slid these photos out for us to bring along and at least on our walk, stopped midway asking to see them and compare them to the boot she asked me to wear (which looks much like the one in the photo). PLEASE NOTE: The name of the boot in the photo!! This woman!! 🙂

Possibility

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The Cle Elum Seven seem to value Young’s Hill, their two-acre outdoor habitat, as much for the potential it offers as they do for the space it offers. They certainly make use of the space in a variety of ways:

But they also seem to enjoy pausing in the doorway leading out and considering the possibilities.

Fortress of solitude

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We’ve been so busy in the chimp house today! Staff and some amazing volunteers raked out all the wood chips and straw in the greenhouse and replaced it with fresh shiny wood chips and straw! 🙂 What didn’t happen, was capturing any good photos. However, a few days ago I captured some photos of Jamie in one of her secret fort building modes and while they aren’t great quality, I do think they’re endearing. She’s always surprising us with her architectural feats and her desire to occasionally build “secret hideout” forts which are incredibly creative and amusing. Maybe she’s been feeling inspired by her Dwell magazines.

And once again we indulged her need to go incognito and pretended we couldn’t find her. I mean, we all need to hide out now and again. “Jamie?? Jamie? Where are you?”

Connections: Honoring James Douglas

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The truth about running a nonprofit animal sanctuary is that most of your time is spent interacting with humans.

I get that this might not sound all that appealing to everyone who is interested in embarking on a career in the sanctuary or animal protection field. Let’s face it, a lot of “animal people” feel strong connections to non-human animals, while feeling some disdain, awkwardness, or unease around their own human species.

Something I learned early on that seems to get reinforced more strongly each day, however, is that people who are drawn to help sanctuaries are some of the very best examples of the human species.

In eleven years, you can imagine that we’ve met a whole lot of (human) people in the form of volunteers, donors, staff members, students, and other supporters. We get to know people and we become aware of both the joys and the hardships that people face in their lives. I often find myself thinking and worrying about humans that are connected to the sanctuary far more than the chimpanzees.

Through our Sponsor-a-Day and Personalized Stones donation programs, we’ve also been introduced to the important human and non-human people in the lives of supporters, often after these influential people have already passed away.

It’s an incredible honor to be able to honor people.

When someone very close to the sanctuary passes away, though, I feel at a loss as to how to appropriately honor them.

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, and the world, recently lost an incredible man. Introduced to the sanctuary by his wife and CSNW volunteer, Jen, James Douglas was a long-serving board member who led CSNW through many transitions. He was full of optimism and positivity, even when faced with difficult situations. He was kind and generous. He was a natural leader. He was a friend and a mentor.

Although the sanctuary was a small part of his life, and he leaves behind many, many people who were changed by his life and affected by his loss, he played an outsized role in the relatively short life of the sanctuary. He meant a lot to us personally as well as to the development of the organization.

I plan to honor the legacy that he left behind at CSNW by working even harder to carry out the plans for the future that James helped to craft and to attempt to approach life and work with even just a small amount of the curiosity, joyfulness, and hope that he exemplified. The same qualities that I see in the chimpanzees.

Cheers to you, James.

Happy Birthday, Joanna!

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We are so fortunate to have two sponsorships for a double day of sanctuary! Our first comes from Kathleen Kemper who sponsored today for Joanna Gabriel and shared this lovely message:

“April 4th is Joanna’s birthday. She has been in love with the Chimpanzees at the Northwest Sanctuary for several years, and is a devoted follower of the daily blogs. Joanna also contributes to the chimps’ enrichment whenever she can. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOANNA!”

Kathleen, thank you so much for celebrating Joanna by including the chimps in her day! We so appreciate you both!

Joanna, we hope you have the best birthday yet! Happiest of days from all of us here at CSNW! And how can you do anything but when looking at this guy:

 

 

Jody’s love of leisure

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Beautiful Jody has  been in the spotlight on the blog quite often lately. But what a treat, as we often don’t get to capture her closeup on camera. Jody is someone who has always taken her leisure and comfort very seriously since living in her sanctuary home. She loves nests heaping full of soft blankets, the warmest of spots to rest and enjoy her meals, and as much as she loves her family, she truly enjoys her alone time as well. One example of this is that she truly gives zero cares as to if we need to enter a certain area of the chimp house to clean if she happens to be enjoying that area. As she should, of course, but you have to smile at her complete commitment to do whatever she feels like doing. She’s an inspiration! I mean, what a wonderful thing seeing her, or any of the chimpanzees, making choices and claiming agency over their home and how their day runs.

If you’re newer to the blog you may not have had a chance to read one of our posts that give more detail to our cleaning routine (which we do daily), but whenever possible we like to try to clean the chimp house beginning with the greenhouse (since this is the area the chimps access Young’s Hill through and once they hunker down in there in warm weather it’s a feat to get them out for the rest of the day!). Of course this time of year that routine commonly switches to cleaning the playroom first because the chimps are indeed enjoying warmer sunlit mornings in the greenhouse and are understandably reluctant to leave so we often serve breakfast there before they head outside.

After we’ve cleaned the playroom, the trick with a toasty greenhouse is getting everyone to accept the invitation to come in for a forage snack so we can THEN hopefully close off said greenhouse for cleaning. Today I was relieved to see that everyone was pretty happy to come inside for a popular food puzzle of raisin boards (small pieces of wood with holes drilled in them that we put raisins inside). But as soon as I’d closed off the greenhouse Foxie sat by the door and continued to peer through the window and she and I looked at each other and I knew. “Foxie, Jody’s still in the greenhouse isn’t she?!” Well, even though I knew she was out there, despite multiple trips out to look for her and repeatedly calling her, I couldn’t find her! I even stood at the fence to Young’s Hill thinking maybe she’d gone on an adventure, calling, “JO! Jooooooo!!” Nothing. Finally, after scaling the ladder to see if she was at the very top of the greenhouse with one last, “Joooo??”, up went one tiny heel of her foot in the air. There she was alright, with zero cares about leaving her toasty nest. Classic Jody. So as I wrote this we were plotting and planning how to get in there to clean at the end of the day while the chimps had dinner inside. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. Because truly, what a gift to be at their service, bend to their needs, go with their flow. What a gift to see their hearts happy.