Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Today we’re thankful for love, family, and food grunts.
On today’s menu:
Field Roast with gravy
baked apples
green beans
cranberry sauce
sweet rolls
baked potatoes
roasted chestnuts
sparkling apple cider
We hope you and your family enjoy your festivities as much as the Cle Elum Seven enjoyed theirs. Happy Thanksgiving!
This is the third post for our week of thanks highlighting seven donors that represent seven different types of giving, while also highlighting the seven chimpanzees.
If you missed the first two, day one featured legacy donor Bruce Davidson + Burrito and day two featured event donor Kathy Cochran + Annie.
Today we are featuring Julie Olson who has been giving a monthly donation to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest continuously starting in December of 2008 – that’s 107 (and counting) donations!
I really love to learn how donors have come to know about the sanctuary. This is what Julie shared about how her support began:
My sister first made me aware of the chimps by showing me the KOMO news story. I sponsored Jody for awhile as a gift to her and pretty soon I was hooked! I sponsor Burrito now and I never miss a day checking up on how the chimps and caregivers are doing.
I thought Julie’s story was particularly appropriate for Thanksgiving because her donations to the sanctuary started as a gift for a loved one.
Like Julie, many of our monthly donors give through our Chimpanzee Pal program, where you can choose one of the chimpanzees (may I suggest Jody?) to sponsor as a gift for someone else or for yourself. You can even choose to sponsor the whole family! Alternatively, some monthly donors choose to give through our general donation page, and we make it an option for special fundraising campaigns too, like the upcoming Giving Tuesday campaign!
We are so incredibly grateful for monthly donations and want to send a big thanks to everyone who gives in this way. Having that steady stream of income to rely on for the day-to-day running of the sanctuary and care of the chimpanzees provides a sense of security.
As someone who also donates to other organizations, I also like to give monthly donations partly because it’s an easy – you sign up once and everything goes through automatically unless there’s a change with your credit card or bank.
I know that Jody has directly benefited from Julie and others’ monthly gifts. Just one look at a “then” and “now” photo shows what a sanctuary life has provided for her.
Jody knows just what she wants and she lives her sanctuary life with a solid sense of independence but motherly concern for her chimpanzee friends. If I were a chimpanzee, I would definitely want Jody to be a part of my family group.
She’s not as concerned with spending time with the humans as some of the other chimpanzees at the sanctuary, which is another thing I love about Jody. She does, however give us humans the best bouncy greetings and is always eager to share her excitement about parties and meals with her caregivers. I’m about to go up to the chimp house now, and I’m willing to bet that we will share in an excited breathy-pant as Elizabeth and volunteers Patti and Grace are setting up the Thanksgiving party.
Elizabeth will be posting about the Thanksgiving festivities later today, but I’ll leave you with a few more photos of Jody.
This last photo, taken by Elizabeth last year, is the November 2017 calendar photo. I forgot to mention in our last e-newsletter that our 2018 calendar is now available for purchase!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This is the second installment in our week of thanks highlighting seven donors that represent seven different types of giving, while also highlighting the seven chimpanzees.
As I mentioned yesterday in the first post highlighting Bruce Davidson’s legacy giving, we at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest have a lot of people to be thankful for every day, and there is not a single day that goes by that I am not actively thinking about how grateful I am for all of the supporters who make up the family of the sanctuary.
Today, I have chosen to highlight Kathy Cochran for her event giving. Kathy is a retired lawyer and a current photographer (check out her amazing photography here). She was an early donor to the sanctuary, starting in 2008. Here is why Kathy gives to CSNW, in her own words,
I represented pharmaceutical companies in litigation for many years, and in that capacity learned about animal testing as a part of gaining approval from the FDA. When I heard about CSNW, I felt one way I could thank and apologize to these beings for their involuntary (and often unnecessary) servitude was to contribute to CSNW. I have since followed this sanctuary closely, and get a great deal of satisfaction knowing that this is an organization addressing the aftermath of society’s mistreatment of these intelligent and soulful beings.
What better chimpanzee to feature as the intelligent and soulful being that she is than Annie?
(above photo of Annie by J.B.)
Like many of the donors we’ll be talking about over the week, Kathy has given and shown her support in several different ways, including lending her artistic talents in designing promotional material and donating photos for our auctions. Raising her paddle during the donation portion of our gala events has been her “specialty” of sorts. Even on years when she wasn’t able to attend our gala, she made sure that there was a proxy bidder to make her donation.
Each year, auctioneer Laura Michalek has been able to leverage Kathy’s raise-the-paddle pledge to inspire others to give during the sometimes knuckle-biting portion of the auction. Kathy’s event donations have gone towards crucial general operating expenses, helped create a greenhouse out of the chimps’ original “outdoor” area, aided in the completion of Young’s Hill, allowed us to purchase and outfit a trailer into a veterinary clinic, and, most recently, have contributed to the Bring Them Home expansion fund for the chimpanzee building expansion.
That was fun to write all of that out, because it shows how integral event donations have been to the last nine years of sanctuary. Wow!
If you’re the type that plans ahead, or if you’re the type that tends to forget (that probably covers everyone, right?), and you’re able to get yourself to Seattle next spring, add the date for next year’s HOOT! gala to all of your calendars now: Saturday, May 19th.
Between Kathy today and Bruce and Burrito yesterday, I hope you are feeling the thankfulness and inspiration too.
Below are a few more photos of the beautiful Annie for even more inspiration.
This one, also taken by J.B., symbolizes how far Annie has come. Looking at her calm face as she is perched high up on the twister structure alone, it’s easy to forget the anxiety-filled Annie that we met when she arrived at the sanctuary.
Annie knows herself so much better now, and her awakening has been a beautiful experience to witness.
Early this morning began with a little snow, then an utter downpour, which has turned into a chilly, but sunny afternoon. Jamie, unphased by the chill in the air, has kept staff caregiver, Kelsi, busy walking all afternoon. In the meantime, the other chimps have been enjoying quiet moments with one another in sunny spots indoors.
Good friends, Burrito and Foxie, enjoying some grooming time in the greenhouse:
Annie (background) and best friend, Missy, enjoying one another’s company in the sun coming into the raceway which leads onto Young’s Hill:
Jody was also in the raceway, but decidedly NOT with a friend. When I walked up to the tunnel I saw her intently looking at something with concern while avoiding touching the ground:
The second Jody saw me coming she clung to the caging, eyes big, hair standing on end and asking me for reassurance before running inside. I thought it might be a snake and when I went to check it out I found, well, not quite a snake, but still…:
Jody had some enthusiastic greetings for her friends this morning…
Today was sponsored by long-time supporter and friend to the chimps, Kery Shaw! Kery shared this lovely message about her gift:
“Today, as I celebrate my birthday I take this moment to reflect on my life and think about all the incredible beings that have come into my life over the past couple of years. November … a time for giving thanks and gratitude. To the chimps: Burrito, Jamie, Jody, Annie, Missy, Foxie, and Negra who have humbled me. They have showed me how to forgive, how to have fun and mostly how to love. To Diana, JB, Katelyn and the rest of the staff and volunteers thank you for all you do and dedicating your life to these magnificent beings. Today and every day I celebrate all of you at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest! From the bottom of my heart thank you for all you do. Much love and gratitude, Kery Shaw – The Stolen Lives Project”
Kery, given all that you do to advocate for and bring awareness and compassion to the lives of our fellow animals, we so appreciate you thinking of the chimpanzees on your own special day. We hope you have a wonderful day in which your kind heart is filled with light and joy. Happy Birthday from all the primates at CSNW!
Burrito and Jody:
Missy and Annie:
Jamie, Foxie and Dora:
Negra and Foxie:
Most people accept that chimpanzees are intelligent, but can they read minds? Not in a Carnac the Magnificent kind of way, but rather, do they know what other chimpanzees may or may not know? Can they take the perspective of another individual and alter their behavior accordingly? In other words, do they have what’s known as a Theory of Mind?
If you spend time around chimps you probably wouldn’t doubt for a second that they do. But one of the roles of science is to challenge our casual assumptions and force us to abandon complex explanations when simpler ones will do. For years, scientists tried to determine whether chimps were truly capable of acting on knowledge of other individuals’ mental states. They ran experiments in behavioral laboratories to try to tease out the answers. For example, would chimpanzees understand that a blindfolded researcher was incapable of telling them where food was hidden because she could not see it being hidden? The results were often inconclusive and it’s not hard to understand why. How often does someone sit blindfolded in a chair in front of you while someone else hides food around the building? What a strange thing to do. And since humans are always in cahoots anyway, who’s to say they didn’t know where the food would be before putting the blindfold on? If the chimpanzees could read minds, they’d probably wonder how we lost ours.
Field experiments offer an alternative to the more contrived situations found in the lab. Recently, a group of researchers studied how wild chimpanzees in Uganda change their alarm calls based on whether they think those around them are aware of the threat or not (read a summary here, or go here for the full article). Not surprisingly, chimps that heard a resting call from a hidden loudspeaker prior to discovering an artificial snake on a trail made a greater effort to alert those around them than when they heard alarm calls from the same speaker. They assumed that other chimps would not make resting calls if they were aware of the snake, and as a result they issued more alarm calls and stayed longer by the snake to point out the threat to those who needed to be informed.
In others words, the chimps’ responses to the sight of a snake were not simply reflexive, the way we might scream when startled. Rather, they were calculated in such a way as to ensure that critical information was given to those who needed it. From one mind to another.
I have to admit that I do wonder about the ethics of exposing wild chimpanzees to fake snakes and recorded calls, and a quick check-in with a trusted friend in the field confirmed that these experiments can have a negative impact if not done correctly. You certainly wouldn’t want to desensitize wild chimpanzees to snakes or fill them with the fear that snakes suddenly lurk around every corner.
I mention all this because a) it’s in the news, b) it’s interesting, even if you already assumed that chimps had this ability, but most importantly, c) it’s a great excuse to update our compilation of chimps reacting to snakes as CSNW:
