Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Mave

Hi, I’m Mave!

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Mave has been in such a fantastic mood lately. She has been grooming a lot with Honey B and Willy B. She has been very playful, playing chase with caregivers, full contact wrestling with her roommates, spinning around on the floor, even climbing the caging so she can to meet the caregivers at eye-level to show off her amazing play face and presenting her belly. I didn’t have the camera on me at the time, and Katelyn and I weren’t able to pull our phones out quick enough to catch it yesterday. So here’s a photo from a couple weeks ago during one of our play sessions. You would just have to image her with that face, but high on the caging to meet eye-to-eye before jumping down and engaging in another game of chase.

One other sign Mave is getting into a playful mood is with her fashion choice. When she is playful, she usually plays with a sock or puts it on as Kelsi mentioned in Mave’s birthday blog. Recently, she has been loving these fruit themed socks we have in our enrichment inventory.

Mave with a strawberry sock.
Mave with the grape sock.

And today, she decided the banana sock was today’s choice after a rousing game of chase.

Once her sock was on, the game of chase continued.

There are only two other fruit sock variations left I have not been able to catch a photo of her with: grapefruit and pineapple. I have seen her wear or at least interact with them, just haven’t been able to capture them on camera.

Speaking of two different variations, have you seen the Mave shirt available on the Queen’s Brunch Online Auction? There is a brown version and a blue version. I am super thrilled with how these designs came out and can’t wait to get mine.

Be sure to register for the Queen’s Brunch to ensure you receive updates on items added to the auction.

Mave and Honey B grooming in their pink car fort.

Training Fun

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Getting chimpanzees to participate in their own medical care is incredibly important for their physical and psychological health. But some chimps, like Foxie, are reluctant to take part. After three decades in laboratories, who could blame her? But with patience, and lots of positive reinforcement, the chimps do learn to trust us. Sometimes, you just have to bend the rules and have a little fun.

Willy B spent some quality time in the courtyard today. I watched as he walked about eight feet across the grass to retrieve a cherry from the ground. He used a small plastic chair almost like a walker so that he had a grip on something familiar. Once he was safely back on the boardwalk, he pant-hooted and then climbed back up to the platform to relax. He even laid down in the shade out there for a while. He’s getting to the point where he only goes back inside for lunch…what a difference a month makes.

And guess who reached out to grab some cabbage from the boardwalk? This is how Willy B started – we’ll see if Mave follows the same course.

Happy Birthday Mave!

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Mave, Mave-y, MAVIS! Today Mave turned 31. We celebrated Mave by having a nice laid back party, just like her. We were so excited to throw our first ever Mave birthday party! As many of you know if you have been following the blog, Mave has been the best surprise. We didn’t know much about her when she arrived at the sanctuary. Mave is a loyal friend, a peace keeper – always need one of those in a friend group, she can be very easy going, she is silly and playful when she wants to be, but Mave has her serious moments too. Mave really seems to love grooming her friends, she is often found wearing socks, and you can find her napping in the chute or mezzanine or anywhere there is some warm sun. She is a California girl.

What was on the Menu, you ask? Well for breakfast she had some of her favorites smoothie, pineapple, banana, peanuts, and chow. For lunch Mave enjoyed some freshly cracked coconut, carrots, avocados, cherries, and a tasty piña colada, virgin of course! Mave loved the freshly cracked coconut!! Once caregiver Anthony served her the coconut she had the most happy and content sounding food grunts. I would say she was very pleased. The seven also celebrated Mave with a Young’s Hill and green House forage. They too enjoyed some virgin piña coladas on this nice warm day! For dinner all ten chimps enjoyed lettuce, beets, watermelon, and sweet potatoes.

Mave spent most of her day hanging out in the chute grooming with her friends Willy B and Honey B. We put all the socks CSNW has into her enrichment today. The floors were covered in socks!

Mave has the best face, I am just going to say it! Every chimp I have met has the best face, but for different reasons. I say this about Mave’s face because of her unique features. Margaret H. Parkinson illustrated a breathtaking oil canvas painting of Mave for the online auction, as Diana has mentioned on her blog! If you don’t want to miss out on all the fun, register for The Queen’s Brunch virtual celebration and online auction! And make sure to tune in our Facebook June 13th for our live stream brunch!

Mave was pretty busy and not particularly interested in having her photos taken today. I did manage to get some photos of Mave eating her birthday coconut!

Oh my! Coconut!

Caregiver Chad had a few photos to share of Mave wearing socks. She seems to be enjoying the fruit style socks currently!

Missy enjoying her piña colada!

Foxie enjoy the forage. Foxie lovessss avocados!

Cheers Mave! We are truly the lucking ones to have you in our lives!

For two happy primates

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We get to begin this day with the gifts of two days of sanctuary for the chimpanzees! The first sponsorship of the day is from Lisa and Marcus Andrews, in celebration of the date “two happy primates met.”

Lisa and Marcus, thanks so much for choosing to celebrate a couple of human primates while making the lives of ten chimpanzees better! We all hope your day is a really wonderful one!

Thinking of primates meeting one another, this brings to mind how we are so honored and happy to have met Mave, Willy B and Honey B and to have welcomed them to our chimpanzee family last year. These three chimpanzee people continue to delight and amaze us with each passing day that we get the privilege to know them more and more.

Mave and Willy B:

Honey B and Mave:

Honey B and Willy B:

Honey B and Mave:

A Chimp Guide to Shelter in Place

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I am extremely lucky to have a job that requires me to come in to work everyday. During these difficult times, it helps to have something to focus on that’s a welcome distraction from the outside world. Fortunately, the chimps don’t really know what is going outside of CSNW. Life goes on as normal for them! Which is why they have put together a guide to help inspire ideas on how to make self isolation fun. Or at least take your mind off things for 3 minutes and twenty one seconds!

Also….

Honey B has so much confidence. It is truly inspiring. She is always rockin’ some new enrichment.

Neggie’s wonderful face.

Annie enjoying the warm weather on Saturday.

Jamie 🙂

Chimping Ain’t Easy

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Prior to my arrival in Washington, I was a photojournalist for the better part of a decade. It was during one of my photography classes way back when that I was introduced to the term “chimping.” The term came about at the dawn of digital photography. It was when digital cameras were beginning to be used more frequently over film (though film cameras were still widely used). Chimping is when you take a photograph and immediately look down at the screen to see how the photo came out.

There are two explanations of how the term came to be. The first is if the photographer takes a good photo, looks down,  and sees it, their response is similar to a pant hoot. A series of “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” as they scroll through their photos. The second explanation is that if a photographer spends so much time looking at the photos they just took, they may miss something. The story goes that a photographer went to a zoo to take photos of chimpanzees. Every time he took a photo he would look down at his screen to see how his shot came out. As he did this, the chimpanzees would do some remarkable things, but stop once he brought his camera up to get photos.

So we were taught to never “chimp” our photos so we wouldn’t miss anything. That lesson has stuck with me even today. Though, admittedly, I will chimp from time-to-time to ensure I got a good shot. By using this method, I have taken a lot of “outtakes” to my blog postings. So I thought I would share some of my outtakes today.

Sometimes these photos are just by chance. Like this photo of Jamie which was taken last week as I was testing out another camera lens we have.

Some times I won’t use a photo because I catch a chimp in mid-yawn. Like this one of Honey B from a couple of months ago.

Or sometimes they blink the second I push the shutter. Like Missy here scratching her chin. She looked pretty thoughtful otherwise, but this is what the camera caught. I admittedly chimped after this photo and wasn’t able to catch her looking thoughtful because as you know, Missy is usually always on the move. An example of why chimping is bad.

Other times, the photos just don’t fit the overall flow of the blog post, but they are too good not to share.

Like these photos of Burrito eating chow after a recent forage on Young’s Hill, Jody waking up in the morning and checking out what is going on outside, and Honey B getting into Honey B antics.

I tried to take some photos today as well. I couldn’t think of how to piece them together to write a well-cohesive posting today. On any other day, they probably would have ended up in my outtakes folder. But they actually helped inspire me to share some of my previous outtakes.

When the chimpanzees got access to Young’s Hill this morning, it was a little chilly. Foxie sneered her entire time outside before retreating back to the Greenhouse.

Jamie held off on going outside right away and enjoyed her chow in the warmth of the Greenhouse.

On the other side of the sanctuary, Honey B made probably the best fort I have seen her make.

And per usual, Mave was just being a mixture of goofy, shy, and beautiful today.

 

Why Not Play!

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The blog originally was going to be about the chimps playing outside in the Green House, Chute, and Young’s Hill all day. Until, I walked into Phase 1 of the building and found Honey B and Mave playing like CRAZY! The all caps is important, because they were wild. Today’s enrichment theme was paper day. Which, if you asked me, I would put a lot of money on that being Honey B’s favorite day. Before I even walked through the door I could hear them playing. They were breathy panting, paper rustling, and I could hear them running. Not just running, but what sounded like they were running and throwing things around! What I wasn’t expecting was for them to be chasing each other on the enclosure caging and hanging on fire hose to get to each other. This was a play session to see!

This photo makes me smile. Willy B was admiring himself in the camera and Honey B popped up to be in the photo.

Bonus photo!

Jamie lounging in the warm Green House this afternoon: