Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.
The chimpanzees spent their afternoon watching volunteers Andy, Ray, John, and Drew help J.B. construct a new play structure on the hill!
Foxie:
Missy:
What do you think it’s going to look like?
There seems to be a lot of math involved:
Does this help?
You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see what the final structure looks like!
First, I want to express our good wishes for all of our primate friends in Florida right now. We have been thinking about Save the Chimps, Center for Great Apes, and Jungle Friends since coverage of Hurricane Irma began. We know the humans at those sanctuaries have been working hard to prepare for the storm and rolling out their emergency preparedness plans in order to keep the non-human primates in their care safe. We’re so grateful for all that you do and know that you will update everyone when you can, just know you are in our thoughts.
Second, this is pretty difficult to believe, but we will be celebrating Annie’s 43rd birthday tomorrow!
We don’t know Annie’s actual date of birth, and, in fact, even the year could be wrong, but it’s important for us to celebrate the chimpanzees’ individual birthdays, even if the dates were chosen by us when they arrived. Be sure to check in tomorrow for the party recap!
And now, for the news of Jamie’s new hideout on the hill. It’s actually not new at all – it was one of the first features that we included on Young’s Hill.
We called it Missy’s Tunnel because we had a plastic culvert in the playroom that Missy liked to run through when she was playing chase with Annie, so we imagined that she would do the same with a culvert partially buried and covered over with dirt on the hill.
We haven’t seen much play in the tunnel, though I have seen Missy run through it a time or two.
This summer, Jamie decided to adopt the tunnel and has been using it quite regularly as a resting stop when she’s doing her perimeter walks around the hill.
First, she coaxes one of her caregivers to put on a pair of boots and “join” her on the walk, then, when she gets to the tunnel, she proceeds to just hang out in there for several minutes while her human subject is left standing and waiting on the other side of the fence.
When she’s good and ready, she emerges and resumes the walk.
Despite not having a tunnel on the human side of the fence, I’m finding this ritual rather relaxing myself just watching her.
And it has brought back memories. At my elementary school, we had concrete tunnels on the playground. They were great places to cool down away from the sun for a bit, gossip with a friend, or just have a voluntary timeout from whatever else was going on. Even though they were out in the open and everyone knew about them, being in one felt like I was in a secret hideaway.
I like to think that Jamie feels the same way about her newfound private place.
No matter how long you work at a sanctuary or how well you know the chimps, there are still moments that take your breath away. Jody, Foxie, Jamie, and Burrito spent decades living in isolation in barren laboratory cages. Today, they are free to patrol their territory as a family.
Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest has held several online auctions over the last few years, filled with fun items to bid on. Some of the coolest and most popular items have been donated by Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day (this year he gave a personally-signed guitar to the Summer Biddin’ online auction).
The Armstrong family has been following the lives of the Cle Elum Seven for a while (proving something that doesn’t need proof: Burrito is irresistible), and Billie Joe’s wife Adrienne, who also owns Atomic Garden in Oakland, and her sister-in-law Jessy have visited the sanctuary a few times – always wanting to directly help out while they are here!
This past weekend, Adrienne, Jessy, Billie Joe, and Jessy’s husband / Adrienne’s brother Steve, owner of Familia Skateshop in Minnesota, all came out for a visit and to lend a hand. Susan Holmes McKagan, Billie Joe and Adrienne’s friend and model, fashion designer, and wife to bassist Duff McKagan also came out for the afternoon on Saturday.
We learned a few things over the two days they were here, including the fact that chimpanzees love Billie Joe. Jamie was extremely excited when he was willing to run with her around the hill, and invited him to do so several times. She didn’t even insist on him wearing cowboy boots:
And a few of the chimps listened while he played an acoustic guitar. Here’s Negra lending an ear:
Adrienne brought some rare brown-haired troll dolls, which Foxie immediately adopted
and brought on a walk around the hill with Adrienne and Susan:
The main task for the weekend was putting up a new structure on the hill that consisted of two tall log posts and a few metal bars that were to be installed between them for the chimps to climb on and swing from.
Not surprisingly, Jamie and Missy were the first to inspect and play on the structure after a forage was put out for everyone to enjoy:
The chimps didn’t have all the fun, though. The humans did a little “chimping around” during their breaks from manual labor:
The new bar structure is really neat, and there’s no doubt that the chimpanzees are going to enjoy it, but I was equally excited that Adrienne and Jessy got the holiday tree from last year planted on the hill:
The tree has been living in a pot in the greenhouse since last December, and the chimps, especially Jody, have been periodically snacking on it:
I’m really curious how that little bedraggled tree will do on the hill – I have high hopes!
As a well-deserved thank you for all the Armstrongs have done for the chimpanzees, both this weekend and in the past with their donations, they got to watch the chimpanzees enjoy the fruits of their labor from the observation deck looking out onto Young’s Hill:
What an awesome weekend for everyone!
If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that Jamie loves her walks around Young’s Hill. She’s definitely not the only one, though.
The other night I was walking around the hill with Jamie (me on the outside of the electric fence, of course) for what was probably the fifth or sixth time after dinner, and I heard something rapidly approaching us from behind. I will admit to being a bit startled. The evenings are usually very quiet and serene around here, and I was sure all of the other chimpanzees had gone to bed.
My temporary flight or fight reaction quickly turned to pure happiness when I whipped around to see who or what was rushing at us from behind. Apparently, from her nest in the loft of the playroom, Missy noticed that Jamie was on another walk, and she must have jumped out of bed and ran at full speed to catch up to us.
Missy is behind Jamie in the following two photos:
How fun to be able to jump out of bed to go on an adventure! I could genuinely feel Missy’s joy in surprising us.
Sometimes I forget the stark contrast between the lives the chimpanzees have now compared to where they came from. How many times would Missy have longed to get out of bed to run around when she was living in the few square feet of a laboratory cage?
Freedom is relative, and the chimps’ freedom at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is definitely not absolute, but their existence is worlds apart from what it was the first few decades of their lives. You can read about Missy’s past here.
And we have you – those who support the sanctuary – to thank for that. So, on behalf of Missy and her sense of adventure – Thank You!
We opened the door to let the chimps back onto Young’s Hill for the first time since the Taylor Bridge Fire hit the sanctuary property on August 13th. Gary Chittim and Ken Jones from King 5 were here to do a story today. You can see footage of the chimps’ excitement and steps out on the hill on King 5 News at 6:30pm in Seattle and online after the story airs (we’ll be sure to share the link once it’s on the web).
The chimpanzees haven’t been asking to go out much since the fire, which is a surprise, since they generally “remind us” in the mornings to open the door by standing by it and getting our attention or luring us over and sticking their fingers through the caging where the door opens.
J.B. and volunteers Brian and John have worked to clean up the hill by removing burned logs, reinforcing a damaged fence post, and dragging (tilling, in effect) the charred ground that covered half of the enclosure. J.B. found a sad relic on the hill that Gary Chittim will show on the King 5 broadcast tonight.
All of the staff joined in a final check of the hill yesterday afternoon so we were ready and anxious to give the chimps access after setting up a breakfast forage.
The chimps mostly stuck to the unburned areas.
Below is a photo of Jamie bringing a wrench out with her on to the hill. Maybe J.B. forgot to fix something?
And here she is with the burned ground in the background:
Annie did inspect the burned grass a bit:
And Missy ventured into the starkness of the top of the hill that was charred in the fire. You can see a ring of green grass coming up – that’s where the underground irrigation lines run to water the bamboo. We lost about half of the smaller bamboo in the fire:
