Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Jamie, Foxie, and Missy have been super playful all morning. The three of them played on top of the climbing structure in the outdoor area for at least an hour and have been chasing each other around the playroom and laughing hysterically the whole time. But everyone knows that in between play bouts, one must nap.
Foxie:
Jamie:
Missy:
The new ladder (click on link to left for video of Jamie and Foxie’s reaction to the new ladder) has created a new space for Jamie to keep an eye on things:
Last week Keith, CSNW’s founder, and volunteer Laura helped J.B. set some poles for the fence around Young’s Hill. We are building a double fence system with a total of 220 poles, so J.B.’s going to need a lot of help in the coming weeks! If you are interested in doing some physical labor volunteering now or in the future, please contact J.B. – he’d love to hear from you.
Here’s a photo of the first set of poles that went up:
Today Denice and some terrific volunteers from Seattle University’s Animal Advocates and the Seattle Animal Defense League are setting more poles. As a big bonus to all of us, they brought vegan donuts from Mighty O in Seattle!! Mighty O donated donuts for last year’s Out of the Box auction Dessert Dash and they were recently crowned the Food Network’s Donut Champions, so this is no small treat for us humans.
Anyway, enough about delicious vegan donuts. Back to the hill. Below is a photo of today’s volunteers setting posts.
And here’s a photo of Negra and Annie. Negra was watching the poles going up. With the two greenhouse panels off, the chimps can see all the work being done on the hill.
It’s not all about poles, either. If you received our recent e-newsletter, you know that all of the topsoil left over from digging the trench for the primary fence was utilized to make some mounds on the hill. To put these mounds in perspective, here’s a photo of J.B. and Jackie on one set (imagine them as chimps!):
It’s that time of year again – right around the time of our wine tasting event, the chimpanzees get to enjoy the bounty from Washington State wine growing too. Thanks to Phil Cline at NHV for letting us pick up a truckload of vine trimmings for the chimps! So far they don’t seem to have a favorite varietal, but just give them time.
I searched for a video to provide a comparison of Jody’s nesting behavior to what chimpanzees do in the wild. Here are a couple, in case you are interested: Female chimpanzee making nest from tree leaves at Gombe Stream National Park and bonobo making a treetop nest. They weren’t easy to find becaues if you do a Google video search for “chimpanzee nesting” – most of the results are videos from Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.
J.B. and I were cleaning the playroom this morning, when we saw Negra, Foxie and Annie playing together. This is quite the unusual trio of playmates, and I’ve never seen Negra play this long in one stretch! There was more than what is shown in the video, but it was challenging filming conditions – through the glass window with the playroom filling up with steam from cleaning. J.B. caught some choice moments, and I know Negra fans will be thrilled.
Today volunteer Kim brought over a discarded tree from her friend Michelle. Kim “decorated” the tree with food for lunch. Later, volunteer Pam came and told me about a Swedish holiday called St. Knut’s (or Canute’s). It was on January 13th. It seems the chimps celebrated it well, though a bit late…
As a fitting tribute to Kathy Cochran’s birthday, I used the beautiful telephoto lens she gave us way back when with the new camera that the board of directors recently purchased for us. It’s so great to have high quality equipment to capture moments at the sanctuary and share them. Perhaps one of these photos will be in the book Sanctuary: Year Three.
Jamie’s love of boots…
