Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimpanzee sanctuary

On the Fifth Day of Christmas…

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Can you believe we’re already at Day Five of our Christmas countdown?! It’s hard to believe that Christmas Eve is this next weekend, even though our foyer is beginning to look like Santa visited early. 🙂 Thanks to everyone who has donated from our wish list! Click here if you want to check it out, there’s still items remaining that we need for the upcoming holiday weekend!

This morning when I went to say good morning to Jamie’s group, I was met with a very playful Burrito who still had the buffalo blanket from yesterday! He had it on his back while he ran across the front rooms to initiate a game of chase. Foxie, on the other hand, was waiting in the Front Rooms with her new Strawberry Shortcake doll. She handed it out to me before twirling away and coming back to take it. On the other side of the chimp house, the Dora Blanket is in the laundry process before being put back in for the 9 to enjoy again. How fun it is to see the chimps enjoying their presents- thank you so much to all those who participated in the Comfort & Joy online auction!

Today, we gave Negra and pals the *fabulous* Negra Blanket! This may be the best Negra blanket to ever exist in all of history. You may ask, how many Neggies is too many Neggies? And the answer is that it’s a trick question – there are never too many Neggies! The blanket features twelve photos of Negra living her best life, which often involves a huge nest and lots of soft blankets. 🙂 Check out the video for more!

Special thank you to:

(our very own) Chadwick de Bree for donating the Negra Blanket

Speaking of Chadwick de Bree – have you seen the news about our exclusive upcoming virtual visit? You will have the opportunity to meet Chad, our enrichment coordinator, and discuss all things enrichment! Click here to learn more and to register.

Handsome Burrito watching the snow fall outside:

Jody enjoying her warm nest:

Negra taking an after-breakfast nap:

Willy B trying to be sneaky:

Willy B watching Cy:

Foxie being silly while playing with her dolls:

Happiest of Birthdays to You, Linda!

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Our sincerest gratitude to Adam and Aimee for sponsoring today in honor of your mom’s birthday!

“Happy birthday to a woman who is full of grace, love and lessons. For always being someone we could look up to. Happy birthday to a wonderful mother. Love Adam and Aimee”

Happy, happy birthday Linda! From all of us here, we hope your day is beautiful and filled with lots of love and smiles.

Celebrate your day with some moments from earlier this year.

Gordo serving some serious side-eye in the Riverfront Greenhouse:

Annie enjoying her lunchtime chow:

Foxie being her sassy self:

Rayne enjoying a lunchtime forage:

Jamie resting on her nest, under a blanket, in the sun:

 

On the First Day of Christmas…

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Happy holidays, everyone! No matter what (or if) you celebrate, this is the perfect time of year to take stock of everything you are grateful for in life. Here at CSNW, we are deeply grateful for the amazing support we receive from all of you. Thanks to you, we are able to provide sustainable sanctuary to all the residents in our care. This includes giving all 16 chimps creative enrichment items and, if you participated in last months online auction, you helped us do just that!

With that in mind, today is the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Each day we will be highlighting the items that were bid on during our recent Comfort & Joy online auction. Today, for the first day, we decided to go with Squishmallows!!!

Thank you to:

Anne M. for donating the Crab Squishmallow

Sara L. for donating the Starfish Squishmallow

Peggy V. for donating the Fish Squishmallow

Diane M. for donating Gary The Giraffe Squishmallow

Susan H. for donating the Squishy Dinosaur Pal

Thank you to these special donors and to everyone who participated!

A special thanks also to you, the person reading this blog right now. We love sharing our days with you and really look forward to your interactions and comments. You help us increase our inter-web reach and allow more people across the world to get to know and fall in love with our amazing residents. Every like, comment, and share helps get the word out to more people! So, thank you. 🙂 And happy holidays!

Lucky, hugging her groups new Squishmallows:

Annie, munching on her groups cabbage forage before inspecting the new Squishmallows:

Mave, holding her BFF Dora’s hand while also rocking a sock:

Today’s Bluebird Blue Sky:

And, if you’re wondering about the location of a certain Baby Yoda Squishmallow… it’s still in the foyer acting as Caregiver Emotional Support. 🙂

BONUS PHOTO: Sweet Annie-bird enjoying dinner last week

To Shift or Not to Shift

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Well, if you read the title you might be wondering, who didn’t shift? Or did they eventually shift? To answer your questions, yes and yes! This morning as caregiver Sofia and I were at the home-stretch of cleaning, we just needed to do the four front rooms. However, as I went to shift Jody decided she might want to stay in front room 2 and take a nap. Burrito being the gentleman that he is, did not want Jody to be alone, so he joined her on the bench. I think we all know that Burrito can’t stay still for very long, so Jody indulged him in a very lazy game of toe and ear grab. It was very sweet to watch them gently play and laugh with each other, so we shifted around them and cleaned all the other rooms. Once we were done cleaning the other rooms we gave them back access to the other front rooms, but it still didn’t look likely we would be getting that room anytime soon. I left for a few minutes and when I came back to check on them they had taken their game to the ground in front room 3. So long story short Jody and Bubba played a very sweet game and Sofia and I got to clean everything eventually!

Today is Wish List Wednesday! Today we wanted to highlight Jamie’s current favorite book (her stash is getting low):

This morning Burrito had a nice play session with Annie too:

Burrito:

Jody:

Burrito with Jody’s toes:

Willy B grooming himself:

Winter is Here to Stay

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Today was a quiet snowy day at the chimp house. The humans were busy shoveling snow and cleaning, while the chimps ate snow and napped in their cozy nest! Everyone was so content grooming or napping that it was hard to capture photos of them. So please enjoy these photos of some cozy chimps I was able to capture. Speaking of cozy, today is the last day of our Comfort & Joy auction! The auction will be wrapping up at 6 pm PT so make sure to check on your bids or bid one last person out! We will be starting to slowly add Christmas gifts for the chimps on our wish-list soon, so be on the look out!

We got a little bit of snow last night and this morning…

Burrito sat still long enough to snap these photos:


The ever so handsome Cy:

Neggie’s silhouette eating snow:

Negra can’t wait for all of her new blankets from the Comfort & Joy auction!

Jamie getting a little shut eye:

Jamie nesting, Neggie style (blanket over head):

Mave in the middle of a big grooming party in the green house:

Burrito’s Sense of Humor

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Burrito is a funny guy! He is always making us laugh, but from time to time his group doesn’t always think he is so funny. For example, in this video Burrito may or may not have gotten a little too wild for Foxie’s taste!

As you can see, Burrito is having so much fun playing with the giant stuffed bear. Make sure to check out the Comfort & Joy auction! There are a lot of great Squishmallows I know Burrito would love!

Please enjoy this silly video and some bonus photos!

The rare close up of Missy:

Beautiful Negra:

Jamie eating snow:

A series of Foxie photos:

 

Five Simple Rules to Becoming Mora

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The thing about Dora is that everyone loves her! If you had told us that she would be the popular girl, I think we all would have been shocked. But it’s hard work being popular, we don’t know how Dora does it. She doesn’t seem to get a lot of alone time, but Dora also doesn’t seem to mind all that much. Especially when it comes to Mave. Again, if we were making predictions of friendships going into integrating this group of 9, my money would not have been on Mave and Dora. But that is the thing about chimps, they are always surprising us! And this was one of the best surprise I think we all didn’t know we needed. It has been so sweet to watch Dora and Mave’s friendship blossom. They truly care for one another and enjoy their time together, which is how the power couple of Mora became. However, there are rules to Mora:

1. Groom or spend quality time as often as possible

2. Three can be a crowd, but not all the time.

*** Rules 3 and 5 are very important and can be repeated or enforced multiple times throughout the day!***

3. No, and I repeat no, more than one arms length apart from each other. If Dora or Mave are to far apart, adjustments must be make quickly!

4. Always try a little bit of each others food. Sharing is caring you know!

5. It is important for any relationship to hug or hold hands as much as possible. The more engulfed the hug is the better!