Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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retirement

Seattle Times article and Adventures on the Hill

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Yesterday, the Seattle Times published a great article about CSNW online. It will also appear in the print version of the Seattle Times Pacific NW magazine this Sunday. Please share it widely if you can – we are so grateful to writer Sandi Doughton and photographer Alan Berner for giving the sanctuary and the movement to rescue and retire primates such great coverage.

This morning, the chimps took to the foggy, rain-soaked hill to play and explore.

As usual, Missy led the group outside but quickly sped away and forged her own path across the fire hose vines.

Annie struggled to keep up since she is reluctant to walk quadrupedally (on all fours) outside – especially in wet grass.

Burrito had spent the early part of the morning engaged in wild and varied dominance displays, which did not exactly endear him to the rest of the group. As a result, the girls gave him a chance to cool off for a bit by himself. Here he is wadging what was left of his breakfast chow bag and probably wondering what everyone is so upset about.

Jody managed to keep the Thanksgiving buffet alive for another day after discovering some leftover green beans on the hill.

Foxie kept her Strawberry Shortcake doll close by throughout the morning adventure.

The Tightrope Walkers

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Jamie and Missy have somewhat different life histories, but they definitely share some things in common.

 

Missy was born in a laboratory in 1975 and used both for hepatitis vaccine testing (and likely other types of biomedical research) and also for breeding. She had four infants, but she did not get to raise any of them.

 

Jamie‘s early life, on the other hand, is a little more of a mystery. We believe she was born in captivity, and we were told that she was raised in a human environment by an animal trainer for the first nine years of her life. She most likely was used within the entertainment industry. Perhaps she was trained to do tricks and loaned out for birthday parties, or maybe she performed in a circus or a roadside zoo attraction.

After “growing up human” during her formative years, she was then put into biomedical testing and, like Missy and all of the Cle Elum Seven, she was used for hepatitis vaccine research. As far as we know, she was never used to breed more chimpanzees.

 

One somewhat random thing that these two chimpanzees have in common is the joy they seem to get out of tightrope walking.

Given Jamie’s early history, you might wonder whether she was trained to tightrope walk as a youngster, and perhaps she was.

But Missy, as far as we know, spent her entire life before coming to the sanctuary in laboratory environments, and not ones that likely had ropes or fire hose or the room to tightrope walk.

In the wild, chimpanzees do a lot of their traveling on the ground, but, when in the jungle, they do traverse through trees and vines to get from one place to another and when playing, hunting, fighting (or running away from a fight), foraging for fruit, and finding a spot for a nest. With their opposable toes, they can grip branches and vines with their feet.

 

Most good captive environments for great apes include ropes or fire hose so that the apes can do what comes naturally to them. If you google “tightrope walk chimp” you will find all sorts of photos of chimpanzees and (apparently mislabeled) gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons in zoos and sanctuaries.

With chimpanzees who have grown up in laboratories, you really never know what they will be comfortable with and what they may decide to ignore or even be afraid of doing. We are unlikely to ever see Foxie tightrope walk, given her avoidance of non-sturdy surfaces, but we did spot Burrito trying out this activity for the first time earlier this month (sorry, we didn’t get a photo). They are all going for year-ten firsts lately!

Jamie and Missy, though, both seem to really enjoy this activity and will do it on their own apparently just for fun. I noticed recently that they do have different styles. I think this may have to do with their individual centers of gravity.

Missy is short and can glide across a fire hose without much need for outstretched arms for balancing:

 

Jamie, on the other hand, is long and lean and seems to rely on quite a bit of balancing assistance from her arms:

Whatever the origins of their common interest in this activity, I’m just glad they can now do it whenever they want.

 

False Spring at the Sanctuary

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I have to keep reminding myself that we’re just in the second week of February. It feels like the end of March outside today, and we haven’t even had much of a winter, making the warm temperature, singing birds, sun, and bare grass even more confusing.

Missy, for one, is embracing it all.

She shot out onto the hill this morning and I’ve hardly seen her indoors all day.

 

This sanctuary was made for her…

 

 

Thank you to everyone who makes Missy’s sanctuary life possible!

Annie Bird’s Birthday

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Today we celebrate Beautiful Annie’s birthday. For the breakfast party in the greenhouse, we chose to have a bird theme because of the bird noises that she, uniquely, makes when she is relaxing.

owl pinata

 

The theme turned tropical with coconut, watermelon (that’s tropical, right?), pineapple, and fruit smoothie. Plus some primate chow, which Annie is fond of:

coconut troll

 

Also included were headbands (on the decorative slinky below) because of Annie’s sense of fashion.

slinky

 

Her friend Francoise even sent a book from Canada for us to interact with Annie (I did, later in the day, but didn’t get any photos – we’ll continue to have fun with this book, I can tell – Foxie and Jamie were very interested in it too!)

bird book

 

Later in the day, for the lunch forage, we had some of Annie’s favorite foods: green onions, leeks, cattails, and romaine lettuce. And we included some roses from the garden, mini-peppers, and more primate chow.

food tray

treat rock

 

Let’s get down to the chimp pics. You decide if Annie enjoyed our efforts:

Annie with chow

Annie with coconut

Annie coconut lip

annie

annie with green onion

annie with green onion

Annie with lettuce 2

Annie with lettuce 3

annie with lettuce 1

annie in grass 2

Annie in grass

annie checking in treat rock

 

Of course the other chimpanzees appreciated Annie’s celebration too.

Burrito on a mission to find more food:

Burrito foraging

 

The coconut was a special treat:

hand holding coconut

 

Foxie:

Foxie with coconut

 

Missy:

Missy coconut

 

Negra:

Negra with coconut

 

Jody:

Jody with coconut

 

But there were plenty of other treats to enjoy throughout the day:

 

Negra foraging:

negra sit in grass

 

Jody with leeks:

jody leek

 

Missy with a mouthful of chow:

missy in the grass

 

Jamie’s hand getting the plate of food from under the tub:

Jamie's hand getting plate

 

 

Jamie with a leek and cattail:

jamie leek

jamie cattail

 

The day ended with more treats – baked sweet potatoes and beets:

Erin serving

Annie eating beets

 

Annie thanks everyone for making her 42nd birthday a day of celebrating her favorite things and honoring how much we love her!

 

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Meandering Night Adventures

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If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know a few things about Jamie–that she likes to patrol the outdoor area, that she likes to have the humans join her on the other side of the fence on these patrols, and that she often keeps the humans late at night in the summer by insisting that we do walk after walk until she is satisfied.

We don’t complain too often about these overtime duties because it makes Jamie happy and because it’s a beautiful time to be outside on the sanctuary property.

Last week, we had a heat wave that prevented the chimpanzees from spending a lot of time outside during the day, but it always gets cooler here at night, so Jamie simply waited until the temperature dropped to get her exercise for the day.

Sometimes, especially during the day, Jamie is very focused on the perimeter trail that she’s worn in the grass, and will follow this path at a fairly brisk pace as we walk on the trail on the other side.

Her dusk-walking tends to fulfill a completely different desire, though, and Jamie will often veer from the perimeter path and explore the climbing structures in the middle of a walk, often stopping to take in a view or rest for a bit. The new Twister structure is a favorite viewpoint of late.

Below are a few photos of her nighttime meanderings.

 

At the top of Twister:

Jamie close up on Twister

Jamie on Twister

Jamie hanging from Twister

Jamie at the top of Twister

Jamie with the sunset

 

After viewing the setting sun, she came down the hill and did some more meandering on the shaky bridge:

Jamie on the shaky bridge

 

Balancing on the metal pole structure:

Jamie balancing on metal pole

 

Finally choosing a cross-legged position to rest for a minute:

Jamie sitting cross-legged on metal post

 

And moving along again:

Jamie hanging from metal pole

 

Eventually heading back inside, quite satisfied:

Jamie in the grass

Foxie & Friends and seriously good news

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Did you know that Dora the Explorer has friends? Foxie knows, and she seems particularly fond of Kate, a red-haired friend who has a “flair for the dramatic and the heart of an artist” according to Fisher Price…

Foxie and friends

Foxie and friends

Foxie and Kate

 

This must be that flair for the dramatic:

a flair for the dramatic

Speaking of dramatic, did you hear about the sanctuary’s seriously good news? If you are on the e-news list, you should have received this email last night, which linked to this story in the Ellensburg Daily Record.

We have a lot of work and fundraising yet to do, but the $50,000 matching grant from the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Fund is the first big step in bringing new friends for Foxie and the rest of the Cle Elum Seven – actual chimpanzee friends! Read more in the announcement if you didn’t get a copy in your inbox.

Thanks to donors in the last several hours, we are now over halfway to a $5,000 match from an anonymous couple and Karen and Don Young to be raised prior to HOOT! – if you haven’t donated, there’s still time to have your donation matched!

 

In other news, I promised to update everyone on the bumper ball. It exceeded almost everyone’s expectations by surviving a few months, but, sadly, it is no longer. Sherry Rogers certainly won the bet on its longevity! Part of the fun for the chimpanzees was trying to destroy it, for sure. We have one more waiting in the wings that we hope to introduce if we can inflate it to its fullest.