Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Party

Happy Birthday Annie!

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Our dear sweet Annie turned 45 years young today! We celebrated her birthday with a sunflower theme! What could be more fitting?! Sunflowers for the girl who makes our world so beautiful and bright. We love Annie so much and it has been an honor to watch her grow more comfortable with herself and others. Let’s all give a big cheers for the most wonderfully amazing Annie!

P.S. We will have a video for you all tomorrow, but I have a few photos to share with you in the meantime.

Annie with her sunflowers:

Our wonderful volunteers made the Green House look so beautiful:

 

Happy Birthday Foxie!

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As many of you may have known, Foxie’s Birthday was yesterday. She turned 43 years young! We made sure Foxie had all her favorite things! There were smoothies, dolls, and watermelon bowls everywhere out on Young’s Hill! Everyone seem to enjoy Foxie’s birthday bash as well!

Annie:

Burrito:

Negra:

Jamie:

 

Easter Morning

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I don’t know about you guys, but Easter morning in my house was the best! Scouring the inside and outside of the house for Easter eggs before your brother or sister got to them, looking through an Easter basket, and eating those eggs you worked so hard dyeing! So, this morning the first thing the chimps got to do was have an Easter egg hunt! A lot of work goes into our parties for the chimps. We at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are lucky enough to have so many amazing volunteers. They are SO awesome that, as some of you might have seen on Facebook, one of our volunteers made the chimps’ Easter baskets by hand!

Our volunteers are a major reason why parties go so smoothly. They help prep days before and the day of, and help us clean the day after.

Volunteer Miranda hiding Easter eggs out on Young’s Hill:

Volunteer Alan planting carrots in the ground for the Easter forage:


Before the festivities could start we needed to give out some routine things like vitamins, smoothie, and meds. Volunteer Lizz also got to serve a tasty surprise for the chimps. The chimps got to have hard boiled eggs! The eggs came from staff caregiver Anna’s happy pet chickens . They don’t get them that often, but when they do, they love them!


It was really hard to decide what photos to choose for the blog today. There were so many good ones, I hope you all enjoy our Easter party!

Annie:

Burrito:


Foxie and her doll:


Missy:


Negra:

Jamie:


Searching for eggs:

But Jody really won this Easter egg hunt. She made out with a lot of loot and I never saw Jody without one of those baskets in her hands either!

  

 

 

Thanksgiving 2018!

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Today’s menu:
Stuffed pumpkins with quinoa and lentils, cranberries, dinner rolls, sparkling cider and green beans. With an additional side of mini pumpkin!

A special shout out to volunteer Patti for driving over a snowy mountain pass to help pull off the meal and intern Emily for all her hard work cleaning enclosures on a holiday!

Annie’s Birthday Bash

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What a day of celebrating beautiful, dear, sweet Annie! We decided to have the party on Young’s Hill, the chimps’ 2-acre outdoor habitat and it was complete with a chimp favorite, watermelon bowls filled with lettuce, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, onions, and cabbage, and a new treat of banana leaves filled with roasted sweet potatoes and onions and leftover watermelon, and beautiful organic sunflowers strewn about!

Aren’t these amazing?! They’re bigger than Kelsi! 🙂 We have the best volunteers who found a recipe for wrapping good stuff in squares of the leaves and another who found them in Seattle for us! Something completely new for the chimps!

Here’s the birthday lady opening her banana leaf packet:

Jody was actually first onto the hill and was very excited to make it back with two watermelon bowls! I caught her mid-blink – sorry Jo! – and food squeaking with delight:

Negra’s approach to the forage was to wait for Jody to bring her haul back to the greenhouse and promptly try to take it!:

Jody kindly let her have one. That said, when Jody came back later with another one she wasn’t so willing to give it up which the Queen wasn’t too happy about, though she did get what Jody couldn’t shovel in fast enough. Oh, Neggie:

Burrito found a bowl for himself and started to make his way back to the greenhouse food squeaking all the way. But he stopped short when he saw Jody and Negra near the raceway and decided to try and play it cool so as not to attract their attention (or probably more specifically, Negra’s). You can see how excited he is by his hair standing on end (pilo-erect):

Of course, he couldn’t wait too long before taking some bites:

Jamie’s tactic was to collect everything she wanted and put it in a good place to return to when she was ready:

Missy:

Annie and Jody out for more:

And Foxie! She was way out on one of the structures by herself when she found a watermelon bowl.

Then…Oh. My. Heart! We could hear Foxie food squeaking with excitement when all of a sudden she just couldn’t contain herself! When chimpanzees are overwhelmed with excitement or fear they will often express a facial gesture known as a “fear grimace.” This is what Foxie is doing here, but she was SUPER excited. Usually others chimps are nearby and they reassure one another, but Foxie just kept looking at us from afar as if to say, “Do you see this??!! Watermelon bowls!!! I just can’t…” We love how excited the chimpanzees get over something as seemingly simple as fresh food. It never seems to get old for them and certainly seeing their joy never gets old for us.

Happy 44th, Annie! May all your days and years ahead be filled with more love, joy and adventure than you ever imagined. We love you so very much!