Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

climb

Good Morning Negra and Willy B!

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Negra has been adventuring for a couple of days. The clips in the video above were from today.

Yesterday, she was lured to Young’s Hill with a lettuce forage, and J.B. snapped a few photos:

She even climbed up on one of the structures, which is unusual for her!

I felt very lucky to be a witness to Willy B’s solo adventure this morning. There was some construction noise from a distance that Willy B may have decided to investigate.

He displayed when he got to very top structure. Maybe he was responding to the construction noise or maybe he was celebrating going all the way to the top!

A Day on the Bray: Lucky Climbs a Tower!

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Mave has been showing off her newfound confidence on the Bray, though at this point she prefers to stay somewhat close to home. Lucky, on the other hand, has been pushing herself to explore the very top of the enclosure. The other day she climbed one of the towers under construction at the top of the Bray for the first time (I think!) and took a moment to enjoy the view with her brother Cy and pal Gordo.

Rayne with one of her favorite books:

Cy, as I found him while closing up the chimp house one evening:

Here’s a photo of the sanctuary taken several weeks back from the driveway on the southern edge of our property which the Bonneville Power Administration built to access their transmission towers for us to walk our dogs along. In the background you can see one of the many cuts along Old Highway 10 where university students and geology buffs go to examine the various strata of ancient riverbeds, as well as the infamous Taylor Bridge, forever linked to the 2012 wildfire which bears its name.

And one from yesterday, after a wind gust blew a plastic bag up this impossibly steep hill while Jake and I were working on cattle fencing. I figured I’d stop a take a photo to hide how tired I was from the climb and buy myself a little time before trying to make my way back down. I was reminded of one of those quirky British competitions where people chase after a wheel of cheese down a steep slope (I’m not kidding) except at the bottom of this hill is simply an old barbed wire fence. This view of the slope might give you a sense of why we couldn’t extend the chimp enclosures any further to the east than we did – bear in mind, the chimp enclosure is itself a pretty steep hill. I really thought about it, though.

 

New Year’s Eve? New Climbing Structure!

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Thank you to that long list of supporters in the video above who donated towards new climbing structures in the Comfort & Joy online auction. What a fabulous day for some new adventure! I hope you all are looking forward to new things with the turn of the calendar tomorrow.

We have had a lot of new things delivered to the sanctuary recently! A huge shout-out to everyone who has purchased items through our Amazon wish list this month. Even with the wonders of modern technology and the efficient delivery of packages, we often don’t know who sent us wish list items. So, if you don’t receive a personal thank  you, it might be because your name wasn’t included as the gift giver. This time of year, we have quite a backlog of thanking to do too, so perhaps a thank you is on the way. In either case, please know how grateful you are for thinking of the chimpanzees and providing them and the sanctuary with much needed and much loved items.

Big thanks also to everyone who has made a donation of cash or securities this month. It’s heartwarming to receive your year-end support and read your messages about how much the sanctuary means to you. We appreciate every dollar donated and will put it to good use in 2024. THANK YOU!

Laws of Motion

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First, as an update, we are 20% to our goal on the Giving Day for Apes fundraiser and about halfway to receiving those matching funds pledged by Donna. Big, big thanks to everyone who has donated and helped us get this far! We are still eyeing that 10:00 -11:00 a.m. PT Power Hour on October 3rd to compete in the most donations raised during that hour. Are you with us?!

 

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There are so many opportunities for scientific discovery here at the sanctuary. As I was watching the chimpanzees forage today, I pondered two immutable laws of motion that Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest operates upon.

#1: Burrito Chimpanzee in motion tends to stay in motion:

 

#2: While Negra Chimpanzee at rest tends to stay at rest:

 

Bonus paparazzi photos I took of Terry very stealthily absconding with one of two coconuts that were part of The Bray forage today. He played it sooooo cool.

“In my day, you had to walk 15 miles in the snow…”

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Unlike what Anthony reported yesterday, the sun was not out much today. But that didn’t stop Missy and crew from going out onto Young’s Hill!

When they were given access to their outdoor enclosure, they ventured to the same structures as yesterday.

Burrito on the other hand wanted more. He tried to convince me to run around the hill with him.

He thought better of it as the outer edges of the perimeter still have a good deal of snow (thankfully for me since the human side of the fence is covered in snow and mud). Instead, Burrito decided to explore Negra’s Cabin.

His desire to run around Young’s Hill seemed to have sparked the desire in everybody else though. Shortly after, Missy, Annie, Jody, and Jamie made their way to a set of logs that haven’t been seen since Fall.

Jody:

Missy running to greet Jamie as Annie watches:

Missy and Jamie greet each other:

Jody heading down to greet Burrito:

Though they already ventured further than they have been, it still wasn’t enough for some.

Jody on a further structure to gaze at the Yakima River:

Missy sitting amongst her beloved trees:

You might guess what is next…

Missy began her ascent up her tree:

There was a good two minute window where I thought Annie was going to follow Missy up! She would stand and grab the tree, but then let go and sit down. She repeated this a few times. In between each take, she would hype herself up to overcome her fear by rocking and tapping the tree and ground. But alas, today was not the day Annie would make her go at climb the trees.

She did, however, settle on climbing on to the top of the near by structure to be somewhat close to Missy.

After a while, Annie decided it was time to head back inside for lunch. She convinced Missy this is now the plan, and Missy obliged.

Look at that dismount!

After landing a perfect 10 dismount, it was time to head inside to enjoy some lunch!

Bonus Photos:

Jody a little piloerect from the cold air:

Burrito on top of Negra’s Cabin surveying Young’s Hill:

more tree-climbing adventures!

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What a day! The video above says it all, but below are a few still photos.

Chad, on his day off, happened to see Missy’s climb as he was accompanying a former chimp house volunteer on a walk around the hill. He and J.B. took some videos with their phones as I walked up with the camera and telephoto lens, which was not working right away, but I did get one good photo of Missy amidst the branches, foraging on pine needles:

and some photos on her way down:

Video: The Chimps are Back on the Hill

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As you may have seen in yesterday’s blog post, the Seven are back on the hill! Here’s the video, as promised.

In case it’s not clear, we had to take down the original fence so that we could expand the overall habitat area and split it into two enclosures. The Young’s Hill side, which belongs to the Cle Elum Seven, was pushed further up the hill and to the north and grew by an additional half acre to 2.4 acres. This was only possible because we purchased the surrounding lots and no longer have to worry about encroaching development (after closing on another parcel yesterday, the sanctuary now owns approximately 110 acres). More space means more room for climbing structures, irrigation, and plantings, and we still have a lot of work ahead of us in that department, but we wanted to get the Seven back out as soon as the fence was complete. Perhaps more important than the expansion in habitat size, Young’s Hill now includes a stand of pine and fir trees, which Missy has already conquered. Who will be next?

One thing to note: Negra is not in the video as she did not go outside on the first day. Too many people and too much excitement, perhaps. But she just went out for a lunch forage this afternoon, so the Queen is also back on the hill.

Now that they are back out, we can turn our attention to completing the Bray. The Sage Mechanical crew is welding the remaining gates and post assemblies now and it will be at least a few weeks before we can complete the fencing on that side. We were fortunate from a construction standpoint to have a prolonged summer but fall weather arrives this weekend and winter won’t be far behind. So the timing for Cy’s group to learn about electric fencing and explore their new enclosure is somewhat up in the air. Whatever happens, we’ll work as fast as we can to keep our options open.

Our thanks go out to all of the donors that made this project possible. I also want to thank Dustin and East Slope Earthworks, Katie, Sean, Dusty, Ben, Karen, Richard, Elizabeth, Tom, Gordy, Steve, Debbie, Donna, Laurie, Kurt, Kristin, Jeremy, Liz, Michael, Lisa, Jesse, Adam, Kyle, Grace, Ryan, Jacob, Nolan, Karen, Claus, Logan, Kyle, Jan, Chet, Sabrina, Brenda, and Chelsey for volunteering their time and energy to help build the habitats. My apologies to anyone I accidentally left off the list. And of course we are grateful to Gary, Aaron, and Jose of Sage Mechanical for all of their hard work on this project. There’s something about the fact that these habitats are built by a community of supporters that makes them even more special.