Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimpanzee sanctuary

Dinner Nook

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We’ve been exploring some pretty big topics lately. Earlier this week I emailed the link to those who registered for the recorded discussion with Jen Feuerstein on introductions/merging groups of chimpanzees, and yesterday J.B. shared his thoughts on the difficult topic of chimpanzee medical procedures.

As a departure from those deep dives into some of the bigger challenges of caring for chimpanzees in captivity, today’s blog post is just a little story from today’s day of sanctuary.

Many of the chimpanzees have favorite dining spots, places where they take their food to enjoy at their leisure. In the greenhouse, Jamie makes a a dining nook out of the smallest and highest windowsill between the greenhouse and the playroom. When I was spot-cleaning the playroom tonight, I found Jamie happily eating dinner in her nook. Though it’s not the easiest place to get to from the ground level where Sofía had served the chimps, Jamie had managed to bring the haul of food to the sill.

One huge advantage that Jamie has being the boss of her group is that she can temporarily abandon her food and generally remain confident that no one will take it. Actually, a lot of conflicts start in her group when someone else attempts to take food that Jamie has either been given directly or that she has decided belongs to her. To Jamie, taking food is a very big misstep that requires an immediate and dramatic reaction, even if, in all fairness, it was not clear that the food was hers. If you live with Jamie, it’s safest to assume everything belongs to her and proceed with caution if you see food that appears to be available for the taking.

Tonight, while in her nook, Jamie spotted a piece of beet on the lower platform, so she left her dinner behind to retrieve it. No one came near her food or the beet that she had claimed.

So she was free to get the bonus beet and traverse back to her nook to finish dining.

As I was closing up for the day, Jamie was motioning urgently to get my attention. When she had effectively secured by gaze, she gestured again and then ran into the greenhouse. I had already locked the human door that gave me access to the outside, but she was very insistent, so I unlocked. I expected that she wanted me to deliver her some snow, but as soon as I entered the human portion of the greenhouse, I saw that there were two pieces of rutabaga on the human side of the mesh outside of her reach. I picked them up and gave them to her, and she rewarded my obedience with a very happy moan before climbing back up to her nook with her second helping.

Pretty Fly for a Shy Guy

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This is Mave.

And this is Gordo.

Today we continued introductions by doing a one on one with Mave and Gordo. It has been a while since either chimp has done an intro, especially Gordo. He just never seems to be around when we shift for intros, but today he just waltzed into the Mezzanine and I closed the door. Gordo and Mave have met before through other intros, but today was the first time they both were really interactive with each other! When they saw each other they immediately met at the mesh to start grooming. I was waiting for a natural break between them to open the door, but I think they could have sat and groomed each other for hours. Eventually, we opened the door and they greeted each other warmly, but separated for some time. Gordo is a shy guy, so we decided maybe they need alone time. We stepped into the foyer to watch on the camera and within a few minutes they started grooming and playing. Gordo has always seemed to admire Mave from afar so we just assumed in intros that they would interact a lot, but the first few times they would greet and groom each other and then they wouldn’t interact very much after. This intro is such an improvement to their other meet ups and they spent the whole afternoon together.

Bonus photos of chimps in a comfy warm greenhouses!

We Meet Again

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There were a lot of familiar meetings today.

First, Honey B and Lucky had a meeting with each other. Though things started off slow when they came together, they did eventually did start playing.

As some of you know, Honey B can be dialed to 11 when she plays, Lucky is usually at a 7 on a good day.

All-in-all, their meeting was pretty positive and they seemed to enjoy each others company.

On the other side of the building, the weather finally provided us a break to be able to shovel parts of Young’s Hill. After a few hours of digging out Young’s Hill from the Snowmageddon snowfall by Sam, Anna, Diana, and J.B., Jamie and her group were finally able to go out onto Young’s Hill!

Jamie with Burrito behind her.
Missy in Neggie’s Cabin.
Jody seemingly happy with her harvest of snowy treats.
Annie bipedally walking through one of the pathways.
Burrito taking in the sights of Young’s Hill.

Here are some bonus photos from the day:

Rayne and Dora grooming in their greenhouse.
Gordo looking as handsome as ever in his greenhouse.

Honey B(adger) Don’t Care

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As many of you know, we’ve been working around Honey B’s odd preferences this winter. She’s a strong-willed individual who voraciously defends her zone of control (which Willy B will attest to). Whatever everyone’s plans are for the day, she has a tendency to shake them up.

Today, Honey B brought more of that same energy.

As she frequently does, Honey declined to shift into the playroom and greenhouse after we cleaned them this morning. Instead, she opted to remain in her beloved front rooms, thus preventing us from servicing them all simultaneously. She watched indifferently as the others rushed out into the larger enclosures.

We’re not sure why Honey B chooses to stay in the smaller rooms; we’ve discussed several hypotheses, all of them equally plausible. Perhaps she prefers cozy spaces, enjoys watching the caregivers clean around her, or appreciates a few moments of seclusion from the other chimps. It’s also possible that she simply likes to introduce a little neutral chaos into our otherwise organized routine. We’ve seen her do just that on multiple occasions.

Whatever her reasoning may be, it’s interesting to watch how this mischievous chimp spends her time apart from the group. Today, she literally hung out in Front Room 7 as I swept, sprayed, scrubbed, rinsed and squeegeed the adjacent areas.

For the first few minutes, Honey B playfully swung on the firehose vines and made an earnest effort to dismantle the fasteners holding them together. Then, she found a toy brush to sweep some nut shells into a small pile. After that, she made a nest in the corner and lounged peacefully as I added fresh blankets and enrichment items to the other rooms.

As far as chimpanzee personalities go, Honey B is definitely on the more human-oriented end of the spectrum. Fortunately, she is also relatively well-adjusted to sharing space with familiar chimps. When I reunited her with her companions after cleaning the rest of their spaces, Honey B politely greeted Mave and Willy B before carrying on with her business elsewhere. All the residents of that wing enjoyed lunch service in their usual configuration and then dispersed out to the playrooms and greenhouses for some afternoon grooming.

Now, as I’m putting the finishing touches on this blog post, I keep glancing over at the new monitors that show our security camera feed. Honey B was just playfully interacting with Terry across the double barrier that separates their respective greenhouse enclosures. I could tell that it was going well by Terry’s exuberant bounces and head nods. They’ve come quite far from their first meeting, during which Honey B went all “honey badger” on poor unsuspecting Terry.

Whether she’s being asked to shift to another area or being introduced to a new friend, Honey B never lets things get boring around here.

P.S. If you didn’t get the “honey badger” reference and are feeling adventurous, you should do a YouTube search about them. I’m referring to the 2011 video with 98 million views. I’d post the link but the language used in the title is absolutely NSFW and thus not safe for the blog either…

Perspective

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I didn’t have a blog post planned for today. Sometimes when I’m in this blank-slate situation, I look back on the blog at previous years of the same date to see what was happening in the hopes of inspiring an idea.

I chose January 15, 2019 to find out what was up. It was a literal walk down memory lane. Then staff caregiver/now volunteer caregiver Elizabeth gave an immersive behind-the-scenes view into what a morning was like at the sanctuary. The post featured then staff caregiver/now Chimp House Manager Anna with a supporting role from then intern/now Veterinary Assistant Sofía.

Elizabeth described the medical clinic trailer, explaining that it would soon be replaced by the stationary clinic that was a big part of the first phase of the expansion at the sanctuary.

Some things haven’t changed a bit from that post three years ago. Like then, the first thing the lead caregiver does is greet the chimps and work through a brief checklist while breakfast is being prepared. Negra can still almost always be found huddled under a pile of blankets.

Some things have changed a lot, though.

Burrito no longer displays every morning, but that’s not to say that he’s completely mellowed out. Today we witnessed a conflict where he swung and ran throughout his side of the building and chased after Foxie with an impressive amount of agility, determination, and energy (conflicts are a part of chimp life and everyone is fine).

The biggest change, of course, is the number of chimpanzees in this house.

Mave, Willy B, and Honey B arrived in August, five months after that 2019 blog post was written, and Lucky, Cy, Gordo, Rayne, Dora and Terry arrived in June 2021, almost seven months ago from today.

The building has expanded accordingly, with many more spaces for the new chimpanzees to enjoy and for the humans to clean up every day after they’ve been thoroughly enjoyed.

The new playrooms and greenhouses really are chimpanzee playgrounds, but it is quite challenging to get good photos of the chimps immersed in them.

Chimpanzees appreciate being up high, and their spaces were built with that in mind. Rayne in particular spends a lot of her time on the “leaves” of the artificial trees in the playroom.

Dora and Rayne were high up grooming on one of the leaves this afternoon. Normally, I would delete photos like the ones below, but I’m presenting them to show how difficult it is to get good photos of the chimps in these enriching spots.

Meanwhile, Honey B was inviting me to a game of chase in her greenhouse, where, despite the feet of snow outside, the grass and bamboo are still green.

I had to physically count on my fingers to verify that 2019 was just three years ago and to take a moment to appreciate all that supporters of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest have made possible. I’m in awe.

Included in this post is the featured (top) photo of Honey B that I also took today to demonstrate that the camera and the camera person is capable of taking a decent photo.

If the chimpanzees choose to be in private spots of their home that we can’t quite reach with our cameras, that’s okay with us. We can all be certain, even without frequent photographic evidence, that they value every  aspect of their home that’s been carefully designed and built to chimpanzee specification.

For the Chow!

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This morning Negra thought we should all go back to bed! Sometimes, no amount of peanuts is worth it, but chow… chow can be motivating!

Negra tried really hard to keep her eyes open.

But the grogginess had overcome her.

Yet, she still tried her best to wake up! She could hear the smoothies being blended and the chow being counted!

For the chow Negra blinked her eyes open!

But alas she closed her eyes again!

One bonus of Rayne with a mouth full of chow!

 

Jump Jump

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As we have discussed many times, Cy is an avid reader. With some kind donations of Shutterfly gift-cards we finally made Cy his book! The pages were filled with Mave’s group, Jamie’s group, the cattle, and of course lots of spreads of Willy B. Cy is constantly flipping through magazines and we have never seen him so startled that he jumps, but when he saw the pictures of the cattle he jumped out of his skin! The first time he even made me jump! Eventually, Rayne took care of it for him and ripped the book up. She is a true friend! Since Cy’s new book didn’t work out, we are running dangerously low on magazines. Cy has been dying to get his hands on some People magazines! If anyone has clean magazines they could spare, we (Cy) would greatly appreciate it!