Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.

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Sanctuary Wildlife

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Things have been quite busy around here lately with construction and the usual springtime projects so like any rational person I prioritized my task list, divided it into manageable pieces, and proceeded to tick them off one by one in a steady and methodical manner. Just kidding. Instead I became consumed with an unrelated and largely unnecessary project: decorating the new sanctuary bathroom!

We decided that the bathroom should be filled with photos of wildlife taken on the sanctuary property so we went about searching through our archives. I enjoyed this so much I thought I’d share them with you. Long-time blog readers will recognize most of them.

Above is a photo of one of a pair of coyotes that built a den in the old irrigation canal just below the sanctuary residence. For a few months we would watch them return to the den with freshly caught rodents and the occasional chicken from our careless neighbor’s house.

Below are a couple of mule deer fawns. The deer on the sanctuary property are unbelievably tame. Some of the does will even challenge our 85-lb pit bull to a fight through the fence, which to my mind seems just a bit reckless. The herd doesn’t travel very far from our 90 acres so we get the pleasure of watching them year after year and seeing them grow up, sometimes to have fawns of their own.

The sanctuary has a number of distinct wetland areas owing to several springs that flow year round. In an area that doesn’t receive any measurable rain for the summer months, these become oases for many species. But some animals have discovered the benefits of moving into the irrigated gardens surrounding the chimp house. This guy found a perfectly nice grape leaf that gets a light rain every night from 2:00 to 2:15 a.m. As long as he doesn’t go in the chimp house, it’s the perfect set up. If he goes in, he will be Negra’s dinner.

The fence posts and wildfire sprinklers around the chimp house are popular spots for many birds like this blue bird pair. Here, the male sings his song and boasts of his athleticism and his many achievements.

Some birds take up residence in our barns, like the pigeons, swallows, and this fledgling Steller’s jay who wasn’t angry that I was taking his photo, just disappointed.

The sanctuary’s compost system is now the Grand Central Terminal to a vast network of ground squirrel tunnels. In the spring they are lithe and svelte. After a few months of compost scraps this guy is going to need to widen his tunnel.

The skies are always filled with raptors, including bald eagles and red-tailed hawks, keeping us under constant surveillance.

No collection of sanctuary wildlife photos would be complete without a photo our beloved and not-so-wild friend, Ellie.

And while cows aren’t wildlife, we’re using the term loosely to mean “not chimps”. Betsy, Honey, Meredith, and Nutmeg are the first four cows to call our sanctuary home and will soon be moving the lush, green pastures surrounding Young’s Hill. We’ll see how they get along with the chimps.

There are a number of animals on the property that we haven’t yet photographed, like cougars, bobcats, and bears, who are typically more elusive. But the plump hoary marmot that lives beneath the front porch of the upper cattle barn is just begging for his picture to be taken. We’ll have to find some room in the foyer for the rest of our wildlife family.

Another New Start for Ellie/Buttons the Elk & Cautiously Adventurous Foxie

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You may have read J.B.’s post last month about our neighborhood elk and her new chance to live a life in the wild. Well, to no one’s great surprise, she did not take to the wild life.

Yesterday, Ellie the elk was moved to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle where, after a quarantine period, she will be introduced to two females and a male elk (with two more females to join soon from Northwest Trek). There were several stories about the move in the local press, because Ellie (better known as Buttons) is quite the celebrity. I thought the story in the Yakima Herald contained the most information.

It’s never a happy day when a wild animal is put into captivity, but she was clearly not adapting to the truly wild life. In an ideal world, Ellie wouldn’t have faced that choice so late in life, but she did. She was at the mercy of those who are tasked with handling wildlife – in this case, the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. In many situations with a habituated wild adult animal, the animal is put down. Scott McCorquodale of WDFW, however, went out of his way to find a different solution for Ellie.

We are happy that the zoo agreed to make a home for her where she will have another chance to be with her own kind and where her many human friends can keep tabs on her. Wouldn’t it be great if more zoos were able to provide homes for animals like Ellie?

We are REALLY hoping it works out for her, and we remain available to help if she’s not able to integrate with the elk at the zoo. There’s a small celebration for Ellie/Buttons on March 27th for anyone who’s local. Here’s the Facebook page about the event.

Below is a video from 2014 of Jamie and Ellie:

In chimpanzee-specific news, the chimps, as I suspect many humans in the area, were outside this morning enjoying what genuinely felt like spring!

To set the scene, when I opened the door to give the chimpanzees access to Young’s Hill, Missy raced outside with Annie, Foxie, Jody and Burrito following her (Jamie and Negra remained in the greenhouse finishing their breakfast). All five of them walked the full path around the perimeter, which was clear of snow thanks to J.B. plowing a few weeks ago.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, I spotted Foxie and Burrito coming down the other side and saw that Foxie was thinking about veering off the path well-traveled onto the hard-packed snow.

She checked in with Burrito, but he was not interested in this adventure and continued on.

Foxie is known to be simultaneously adventurous and cautious, so she wasn’t about to just nonchalantly stroll onto the icy snow. She needed to test it out by first punching it and then putting just some of her weight on it.

When she was satisfied that it could hold her full body weight, she took a couple of tentative steps:

Jody, in the meantime, was watching all of this from below. Jody, being the manager/den mother of the group, seemed a little concerned. I’m not sure if it was because Foxie was the last one still up the hill or if Jody thought Foxie’s steps onto the snow were ill conceived.

In any case, Jody went up to collect Foxie, and Foxie obliged by following her back down the hill – on the proper path.

A new start for Ellie

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Ellie is off to start a new life.

Seven years ago, we were graced with this most unusual visitor. As we sat with a small group of supporters in the sanctuary’s old barn, an elk walked in, took an apple off the table, and proceeded to chew everyone’s hair. We were stunned.

We didn’t know it at the time, but this elk had been orphaned shortly after birth and raised at a neighboring ranch. As she matured, she began to wander farther and farther from the ranch until she stumbled upon our sanctuary.

Not knowing her history, we named her Ellie. We would later find out that she had been named Buttons by those who raised her.

Ellie is a wild animal in that she is not a member of a domesticated species, but behaviorally she is as far from a wild elk as could be. To call her tame would be an understatement. She would stare at us through the window as we sat in the house. We had to change a doorknob after repeatedly finding her in the garage in the middle of the night eating dog food out of the can. We fenced off our back yard to keep her from taking food off of the picnic table and fenced off the front yard to keep her from antagonizing our dogs. She was so close to figuring out how to open the sliding door to the office. It was a never-ending battle – nothing was safe from Ellie and no place was secure.

Despite the challenges of living with an elk, she became a part of our sanctuary family. She was a fixture at the chimp house and seemed to enjoy watching the chimps frolic on Young’s Hill. Sometimes she would even join the chimps on perimeter walks. And she loved visitors more than anything. For Ellie, every UPS delivery or propane tank fill-up was a social occasion. We discouraged contact with Ellie to reduce her comfort around humans but no-contact policies with elk only work if the elk are in on the deal. Try telling a pushy 400-lb elk to keep her distance and you will realize that she is the one who makes the rules.

Throughout the years we agonized over what could be done for Ellie. As interesting as it was for us to have her around, this was no life for an elk. We wished that she would have been placed with a licensed wildlife rehabilitator from the start but that opportunity had passed. Early on we had hoped that she would voluntarily join a passing elk herd but she showed no interest in other elk. We looked into placing her at a wildlife park with no success. We feared her catching the attention of the Department of Fish and Wildlife because they had a policy of euthanizing deer and elk that had become habituated to humans. Given the limited options available, it seemed that letting Ellie be Ellie was the best and perhaps only possible course. This was the only life she knew, and somehow it seemed to work for her. Then again, what do we know about elk?

Unfortunately, over the last couple of winters Ellie began crossing the river to a small neighborhood on the opposite ridge. She was welcomed there, but more people and more homes meant more attention and more opportunities to get into trouble. Apparently, Fish & Wildlife was notified and felt they had to do something to protect her and the local residents, so last week they darted Ellie and relocated her to an area 30 miles south where there is an elk feeding station and a herd of 700 elk. We don’t know if she will find a place in a herd but we have no choice at this point but to be hopeful.

Many people in our county are outraged that Ellie was taken away. I honestly don’t know what the right answer is. She was loved and celebrated by this community but she was also intimidating at times and potentially dangerous. She is an elk that should be living with a herd but she is also a unique individual that declined opportunities to do so in the past. In many ways her experience is a lot like that of the chimps. Biologically an elk, raised by humans, but not of either tribe.

Much of this county will be following Ellie’s saga closely and the Department of Fish & Wildlife has promised to evaluate how well she has acclimated to her new environment later this year. We can only hope that she succeeds. Godspeed, Ellie – you will be missed.

The elk that stole my job

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Many of you know that Jamie likes to be accompanied by a caregiver when she patrols Young’s Hill, her 2-acre enclosure. It’s the best part of the job, in my opinion – fresh air, exercise, and some quality bonding time between chimps and the humans that care for them. And if I’m being honest, it’s just nice to feel needed once and a while.

But it looks like us humans won’t be needed much longer.

This morning, Jamie and Burrito took a walk around the hill with our neighborhood elk, Ellie. This wasn’t the type of patrol we typically see in response to an intruder – Jamie wasn’t aggressive or even particularly vigilant. In fact, it looked to me like the same leisurely stroll that we take with Jamie every day…I mean, used to take every day. Before Ellie took over.

At least Jamie still needs us to clean her enclosures. For now.

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Cle Elum Wildlife

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As many of you know, our beloved (and sometimes troublesome) resident elk, Ellie, has made it a very well-known fact that she is in fact a horse. Or a cow. Or a goat. Or a human! But certainly not a wild elk. Despite her outward friendliness, we still keep our distance—she is still wild, after all, and ideally we would love for her to be more wild and less attracted to sticking around humans.

Today, Elizabeth spotted Ellie up on a high hill to the south of the sanctuary property. We both laughed, saying “what is Ellie doing way over there?” And then we realized, when four other elk followed, that wasn’t Ellie at all! We got very excited to see a small herd, which is sort of amusing when we see Ellie every day—elk really aren’t novel animals to us. But a herd! So exciting.

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Unfortunately, Ellie was busy breaking into our compost bin—a very Ellie-type thing to do—so she missed the herd as they passed through. As much as we wish for her to be wild, we recognize that she is a unique being. She probably will always be more human-oriented because of how she grew up. Honestly, I’m not sure she would identify herself as an elk.

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Imagine growing up with another species as your primary caregivers—you would undoubtedly have some sort of identity crisis. And though it is no one’s fault that Ellie was separated from her herd and ended up living at the farm next door, it’s definitely not the ideal situation for an elk.

For a chimpanzee, living in a human home is even more unnatural, and not surprisingly chimpanzees raised so closely with humans really struggle with their identity. Elizabeth wrote about “Burrito the misfit” the other day, and it’s so true. If he had been raised in an appropriate social environment, he most likely would be alpha male.

Some other “side effects” to being raised in an natural environment are Jamie’s love of boots and Foxie’s love of trolls. Though these are just part of everyday life here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, when you think about it for a minute, it really is quite odd. But they are all unique beings and all have their idiosyncratic tendencies. For Ellie, that means rummaging through things, sitting in Diana and JB’s garden, and taking perimeter walks alongside the humans as Jamie leads the way on the inside of Young’s Hill.

For Foxie, that means delighting in these sort of funny-looking dolls with big eyes, crazy colorful hair, and hard plastic bodies. Here she is in a calm relaxing moment with one of her dolls (you can see just part of the troll in the top picture—he/she is out of the frame in the others but was still in her hand).

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She’s back…….

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Cle Elum’s favorite elk is on the move again.

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Ellie, as we have named her (others in town also know her as “Button”), is a wild elk that was separated from her herd at a young age. She found a safe haven in the pasture of a nearby ranch, where she helped herself to the hay set out for the horses and cattle throughout the winter. She’s free to come as go as she pleases, since elk can easily jump the fences typically used to contain farm animals. In the warmer months, when food is plentiful, she wanders the Bristol Flats canyon and the side of Lookout Mountain, and because spring came early to the Northwest this year, she decided to venture over to the sanctuary this week for a visit.

She likes to stop by the sanctuary office to check up on us and the cats:

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She also seems to enjoy teasing our dogs. They’ve never met an animal so unmoved by their barking and growling. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

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She greets all visitors to the sanctuary, including unsuspecting repairmen.

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Seeing Ellie is always bittersweet. We’d love to see her rejoin a wild herd, but in the few times they have come back through the canyon, she has either declined to join them or was not accepted. In many ways, she probably has the same kind of identity confusion that we see in cross-fostered chimpanzees (chimps that were raised as if they were human). Perhaps she even sees herself as more cow or horse than elk.

But she certainly enriches the lives of the chimps. When they first saw her two years ago, they tried to scare her away from Young’s Hill. But unlike our dogs, they eventually realized that she wasn’t going anywhere, and now they greet her more with interest than with fear or territoriality.

Sandra, a Level 3 volunteer, was walking around the hill with Jamie yesterday when Ellie decided to make an appearance. She and Debbie put together this video: