Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

rescue

Queen of the Hill

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Negra has spent more time outside today than any of the other chimps. Here at CSNW, that marks the official start of spring.

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That’s because Negra is always the first to realize that the spring grass is ready to eat. A rainy March followed by a week of sun and unseasonably warm temperatures turned Young’s Hill once again into a 2-acre salad buffet. The moment Negra decides that the shoots are long enough and sweet enough to pick, she plants her butt down and eats to her heart’s content. And when the other chimps see her eating grass, they start digging in too.

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But no one loves spring grass as much as Negra.

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Of course, Missy can’t just sit around eating grass all day.

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But she took a break long enough to pick a few of the finest blades of grass on the hill.

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Distractions

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Caring for chimpanzees is harder than you will ever know. All we want to do is work – we live to sweep, scrub, and spray down enclosures – but these chimpanzees keep coming along and distracting us. Here, Anna does her best to satisfy Jamie’s demands for some playtime so that she can return to her true passion, squeegeeing.

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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Jamie’s choice

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Jamie spent her childhood living with a trainer. Her records are scarce, but she was most likely used in some form of entertainment before being purchased for use in biomedical research at around the age of nine. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to see chimpanzees (or any wild animal) robbed of their natural lives, their childhood, and their family and social structures in order to provide so-called “entertainment” for humans. While we cannot change the histories the chimpanzees have experienced, or the fact that they will be in captivity for the rest of their lives, we do our best to provide them the space to be themselves, exactly as they choose in every minute of the day. A safe, dignified and loving home in which their “chimpanzee-ness” can come out.

We give the chimpanzees a variety of enrichment each day to keep their curious and intelligent minds engaged as much as possible, but whether they play with it, nest with it, tear it up or ignore it, it’s their choice. Jamie is highly intelligent and most likely as a result of her unnatural history, she is also very human oriented in her interests. She will often choose to use enrichment in ways that the other chimps don’t. But that’s the key – she gets to choose. When Jamie first arrived here she periodically chose to wear clothing that was included in enrichment, but over time her desire to do this has faded away and thankfully been replaced by chimp like activities such as walking the perimeter, playing with her friends, and being the boss of us all. But given her unnatural history, it’s only, well, natural that she would still incorporate things that are familiar to her in her play from time to time.

So while supervising the cleaning of her home from atop her barrel, this was one of Jamie’s choices:

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An upside-down-Jamie-on-a-barrel is always a happy Jamie.

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If you’d like to learn more about how you can help end the exploitation and abuse of great apes, please check out our advocacy program, Eyes on Apes, and sign up for our Take Action Alerts. Just as Jamie once did, there are others who need your voice.