Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

dolls

Stuff

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As many of you know (especially if you watched the recent Christmas videos), the CSNW chimps have a lot of stuff. Most of the chimps are not attached to these things – they use them and enjoy them and then go on about their business. But some chimps are quite materialistic and borderline obsessive about it, too.

This morning, Sofia and I were cleaning the playroom when I heard Jamie emit a “low moan” from the front rooms. This is a vocalization that often indicates satisfaction. I imagined that she had saved her primate chow from breakfast, as she often does, and was digging into it in private while the others chimps groomed in the greenhouse. But when I peeked around the corner I found that she didn’t have any chow and was simply making a nest. With her, however, was her favorite book, I’m Lucy.

An attachment to things wouldn’t work very well for a species that ranges across a vast territory and rarely sleeps in the same place twice. While Jamie was not fortunate enough to know the life of her wild counterparts, there’s some comfort in knowing that she gets to experience the same pleasure we do when settling down with a good book on a snowy winter morning.

 

On a separate note, I just wanted to express our thanks to the rest of the staff (and their spouses) who dealt with some challenging conditions while Diana and I were gone on a longer than expected trip. Kelsi mentioned that the well froze up, but she may not have mentioned that the cattle water also froze up just as we left, the radiant heat in the original chimp building stopped working the next morning (we have backup heaters on standby), and the tractor refused to run, requiring them to find someone to come plow the sanctuary’s long and steep driveway on short notice and make multiple trips to the well house with a heat gun using snowshoes. All of this on top of having to take turns staying overnight at the sanctuary through the holidays. Some might say that Diana and I were the real heroes last week, as we valiantly struggled to enjoy all the cookies, cocktails, and Christmas presents with my family while burdened with the knowledge that the rest of the staff were facing one catastrophe after another. But I’d say our coworkers did a pretty good job, too.

a little bit about Fantastic Ms. Foxie

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It was recently brought to my attention that we haven’t had a lot of blog posts about Foxie lately. So, I wanted to let everyone know that Foxie is as fantastic as ever.

I did try to get some photos of her today, but I only got a couple of mediocre ones with my phone as Foxie anticipated and then ate the avocado that Sofía served at dinner:

There’s virtually no where you can go on Foxie’s side of the chimp house without seeing signs of her. Here’s a few photos of Foxie calling cards that I took tonight while spot-cleaning the loft:

I remember several years ago remarking on Foxie’s suddenly gray hair on her arms, which was an undeniable sign of her getting older.

Just last week, however, Foxie did a full flip from a standing position while playing with me. That old lady still has a lot of energy and is way more fit than I am!

Here’s a selection of Foxie photos from the past:

This photo of Foxie:

taken by Katelyn, was the inspiration for this year’s HOOT! graphic, created by loyal blog-reader, Foxie fan, and graphic designer, Kathleen Corby:

It’s true – we are planning an in-person HOOT! fundraising fête this year on September 16th. Stay tuned for more details.

Thank you to everyone who loves Foxie. She is one-of-a-kind and has a way of stealing our hearts every day.

The Doll Thief Strikes Again!

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The doll thief is back! While we did a deep clean on chimps playroom, Foxie and Jamie decided to play. Jamie has been in a great mood and as many of us know Foxie always tends to get the silly side out of Jamie. This play session may seem similar to last Friday, though not quite as epic as Jamie lifting Foxie up, but still pretty great!

After the play session was over, Foxie needed to rest.

And for those who need a daily dose of  Burrito, here he is enjoying his bags of chow :).

The Doll Days of Summer

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We start each day with a walk around the perimeter of Young’s Hill. This is done as a precaution to ensure that the fence wasn’t somehow compromised overnight, but it is also a great time to check on the cows. While they are constantly on the move, on summer mornings they can often be found just above the chimp enclosure where they like to sleep. As I walked by this morning, the girls were in the middle of a grooming session.

Honey grooms Betsy.
Betsy grooms Meredith.
Meredith grooms Honey.

Nutmeg didn’t get any of the love this time, but don’t worry – his mom always takes care of him. I did got photo of him the other day as he drank from the spring-fed stream that bisects that sanctuary property.

Willy B was feeling pretty adventurous again today. He’s getting pretty comfortable sitting on the grass if he is close to the structure.

If he ventures any further, he brings a chair with him for a sense of security, or perhaps so that he can get his feet off of the ground at a moment’s notice.

At one point, I saw him rolling the big white barrel away from the boardwalk. What on earth is he doing? Diana even called me on the radio to inquire as she watched from the mezzanine inside.

After pushing the barrel out into the courtyard, he pulled up a chair and sat down to enjoy the view.

After lunch, Diana was weeding the garden by the Greenhouse and gave out some of the prickly lettuce that she had pulled. This is one of the chimps’ favorite weeds. They can pick as much as they want from Young’s Hill but I think it tastes better when someone else does all the work.

Missy wasn’t in the mood for prickly lettuce, though – she wanted goat’s beard – so she took off to Young’s Hill to find some.

I know we’ve mentioned this before, but the salt and pepper hair on Foxie’s arms is really starting to lose its pepper.

Thankfully, age has not slowed her down yet.

While Foxie’s love of dolls is unmatched, others in the group can be seen carrying dolls from time to time, particularly in the summer. Just like the waistbands, it’s a seasonal thing. You know who really likes Dora the Explorer lately? This guy.

The Things We Carry

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A few months ago, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest was invited to contribute to an exhibit in the Museum of Culture and Environment at Central Washington University. The exhibit, entitled “The Things We Carry,” would feature objects of significance to the members of our local community.

Our community, of course, includes seven chimpanzees, and you’d be hard pressed to find objects of greater significance to their owners than the boots and dolls carried by Jamie and Foxie.

During the opening reception for the exhibit, Dr. Jessica Mayhew, who is both a professor in the Primate Behavior and Ecology program at CWU and a CSNW volunteer, provided some very moving remarks on the installation:

When you have the opportunity to go in and experience the exhibit, you’ll see some objects that undoubtedly look familiar to you.  A pillowcase, a toddler’s dress, empty bags of potato chips.  Also encased are some cowboy boots and dolls.  Cowboy boots in this region are common, and many of us can surely remember the various iterations of Troll dolls beginning in the 1960s.

But what’s special about these boots and these dolls, is that the objects do not belong to humans, they belong to two chimpanzees from Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest: Jamie and Foxie.  Jamie and Foxie are only two of seven chimpanzees residing at CSNW, and they are not the only chimpanzees that carry objects, but their object carrying has become iconic, picked up in popular news stories across the US and globally.

As a primatologist, I have watched my fair share of object manipulation, tool creation, and object play in macaques, in capuchins, in the large-bodied apes.  Jane Goodall first described tool use in chimpanzees in 1960, when she observed David Greybeard termite fish with a piece of grass.  We’ve been grappling with the implications of those observations ever since.

Objects occupy a wide functional range in the lives of primates.  Some are used in the acquisition and processing of food – capuchin monkeys carry large, hard hammer stones up from nearby riverbeds to their nut cracking sites; chimpanzees have been observed to carry sticks, stems, and sturdy grasses from one location in their home range to termite and ant nests, where they know they will not find suitable fishing materials.  Objects do not always have to be inanimate: mother primates regularly carry their infants, most often on their backs, but sometimes on the chest, which can make walking a bit of a challenge.  Still other objects are used in ways that we have only begun to observe and decipher: stone handling in multiple macaque species, log and rock cradling in chimpanzees.

But there is something different when the object is one that’s familiar to us; one that may have played a large role in our childhood, like dolls or action figures, or is an object that is perhaps a part of the larger cultural fabric of a place, like cowboy boots.  When familiar objects are put into hands that are a little less familiar, it makes the divide between human and non-human a little bit narrower.

There are 7 chimpanzees at CSNW, all of them very much individuals, all of them vibrant and compelling; they were known as “The Buckshire Seven”, because they were housed at the Buckshire Corporation in a windowless basement, and spent the majority of their lives leased out for various biomedical studies.  Jamie was born in captivity around 1977, and she spent the first nine years of her life in the entertainment industry before entering into the biomedical realm.  Foxie, on the other hand, was born into the biomedical industry in 1976: she was used in vaccine trials, she was used as a breeder.  Each time she gave birth, her infant was carried away by humans.
This group became “The Cle Elum Seven” when they moved to sanctuary in 2008.  Jamie has spent the last nine years of her life, taking chimpanzee patrols around the property with her human friends, who are always in boots.  Foxie has no shortage of dolls to carry with her, and no risk of them not being there each day.

The exhibit description tells us that, “Objects hold memories. Physical things carry traces of people we have loved, times of joy and terror, and places we may have heard of, but never visited.  They connect us to distant homelands and important moments in personal and family memory. Through our objects, we carry with us complex emotions and histories.  Sometimes, in contemplating these material things, we discover new insights about where we have come from and whom we might become.”

Maybe Jamie’s very specific love of cowboy boots comes from her early days reared with humans.  Maybe Foxie’s love of dolls comes from never fully experiencing motherhood.  Maybe, I’ll leave that for them to know, ultimately.  But I will say that these objects serve as reminders for us, as onlookers, for where these chimpanzees have been and for what humans have done to them.   They are powerful expressions of both great sadness and great silliness.  But they also serve as symbols of hope, that circumstances can change, that life can be better and full of kindness and compassion.

The exhibit title, “The Things We Carry” seems all the more fitting now with the inclusion of these artifacts from our closest relatives.  This is a community-curated exhibition.  Not just this local community of humans with stories to tell, and memories to conjure, but the deep roots shared by humans and our closest kin.  Indeed, we are all carrying physical, emotional, and metaphorical things.

 

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