Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Sanctuary

Happy Birthday, Donna and Paula!

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Donna Haggarty-Robbins sponsored today in honor of a double celebration with this really lovely message:

“Today is my sister Paula’s (Andrews) birthday and mine! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our birthdays (4 years apart) than to support the wonderful work you all are doing at Chimpanzee Sanctuary NW. These retired and rescued medical research chimps deserve all the loving care the dedicated Sanctuary staff provides them, year round.”

Happiest of birthdays to you both, Donna and Paula! Thank you so much for your generous support and kind words. We’re so grateful for the love and abundance that surrounds the chimpanzees and their home. All of us hope you have a beautiful day!

Annie and Missy:

Jamie and Foxie:

Burrito and Jody:

Honey B and Mave:

Rainy Day Play and Birthdays

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This blog was not quite what I had planned today. In my head, I thought I would talk about our infamous blanket shredder(s). As a person who tries to keep up on inventory in the chimp house, I’ve found that we can’t seem to catch up on blankets. So, if you have ever desired to purchase blankets for the chimps there are plenty on our wish list!

Then the blog was going to be all about Meredith, because it’s her birthday today! Happy birthday Meredith! To celebrate, caregiver Chad brought the cattle some willow tree branches and cob to go with their hay. But, Meredith and friends had other plans. The cattle just wanted hay, which they made very clear when they bombarded the gator! So, because Meredith only wanted to celebrate her day with hay and her three closest friends. I was able to capture some very silly chimps on a pretty rainy day.

In the video you will watch Jamie hanging upside down like a bat stomping around upside down and making one caregiver very out of breath (that would be me). Minutes before the seven were about to go back into their freshly clean playroom, Negra, Burrito, Jody, Foxie, and even Jamie joined in to play slap, bite, tickle, & toe grab! Now, it may look like they where playing rough with Negra. But I will warn you Negra created that term! Please enjoy the bloopers were Jody attempts to stab me with a tube and Foxie tries to poke the camera :).

Happy Birthday to the beautiful Meredith!

The First Fall Harvest

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Happy Fall Equinox, everybody! Though today was the first day of fall, it still felt like summer. It was a pretty mild day with clear skies. With conditions like these, we are trying to capitalize on as many forages for the chimpanzees we can fit in before the colder weather starts to creep in.

On today’s menu were kale, sweet potatoes, carrots, and oranges.

Missy:

I know we think of Missy as Fake Negra, but I almost had a moment where I thought there was a Fake Jody.

Annie:

Jody (the REAL Jody):

Negra:

Burrito:

Jamie:

Foxie:

On her way down from the Escher, Foxie came across one of her nemeses: Grasshoppers!

After their forage, it was perfect weather and timing for naps and relaxing!

Jody resting while still nibbling on some of her greens from the forage.

Foxie about to nod off for an afternoon slumber.

On the other side of the building, the Three were treated to leeks for dinner.

Willy B:

Mave:

Honey B decided to take her food and run, literally. She demanded her portions (especially the leek) and ran into the Chute.

Summer’s last sigh

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The end of summer. How can it be? I am an autumn person through and through. If there were nine months of autumn and one month each of winter, spring, and summer I would be pretty happy with that. But this year, no one I know, myself included, feels ready to let summer go.

Given the many days of Burrito’s recovery (now thankfully healed and returned to his family), followed by the many days of hazardous, smoke-filled air (now thankfully cleared away), we are all beside ourselves with gratitude at the sense of ease, joy and freedom we’ve been having this week. The chimpanzees’ have continued to enjoy lunch forages on Young’s Hill and we’ve all been basking in the final gifts of summer, each of us sighing along with summer’s last breath:

Jody holds her reign as “Farmer Jo”:

Negra enjoying her lunch with a view:

Foxie:

Burrito:

Jamie:

Annie:

Diana mentioned on Saturday how we’ve been anxiously awaiting the chimpanzees’ grapes to ripen and have finally been able to harvest these beauties. Can you believe these gorgeous things?!

I went out to harvest some for dinner, but Annie, Jody and Burrito insisted they should be served immediately, garden to belly:

Everyone squeezed (politely, somehow) into the raceway (the chute that gives the chimpanzees access to Young’s Hill from the greenhouse) and lined up for their serving. Bunches of grapes aren’t the easiest things to serve through the caging so apologies for all the caging shots. But, their faces! A fleeting summertime gift.

Jo!! My favorite photo, look at her eyes! 🙂

Foxie:

Burrito’s tactic is just shoveling them in as fast as he can, naturally:

Missy and her sweet little runner’s legs:

(And fiddlesticks, I just realized that my photo of sweet Annie with her grape cluster didn’t take, and Negra chose to stay in her nest, though she did receive a few grapes via delivery).

Meanwhile, I could hear Willy B blowing raspberries from the other side of the grapevines, in the chute, where he and Honey B were anxiously waiting for their serving:

Honey B:

In the past couple of days that we’ve been harvesting the grapes we’ve learned that Mave in particular LOVES them. She chose to wait inside for hers and when I rounded the corner with them her hair was standing on end in sheer excitement (pilo-erect) making her glorious fluffy self even floofier! Here she is gazing adoringly at them:

Somehow the grape feast, being a hot ticket event, went off without a hitch. For the most part that is. Turns out the seven were not in a sharing mood and had a lot to say about the three partaking in the feast as well. That’s alright. I don’t like sharing, say, my cookies, so I get it. 😉

A bonus photo of Jamie enjoying her beloved boot book in her nest:

It’s been such a beautiful day. It’s nearly dark already and as I type this I hear geese flying overhead and the raspberry patch is a chorus of frog song – I suspect from the little guys I rescued and put in there earlier today. Betwixt and between. Wherever are you, and whichever season you happen to be saying farewell to in your part of the world in welcome of the next, I hope there’s beauty there. I’m convinced it’s there for all of us in one form or another. We just have to keep an eye and an ear out.

If Looks Could Kale

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Jody has a healthy appreciation for fresh, hand-picked greens.

Recently, local volunteer Krissy has been delivering bags of primate chow to the sanctuary’s front gate. More often than not, she also leaves behind a large bin of produce from her home garden. This weekend, we added the generous assortment of leafy greens to the chimps’ lunches, which we then dispersed in Young’s Hill so that they could spend the afternoon foraging.

Most greens are cultivars of one species: cabbage. In its wild form, cabbage (Brassica oleracea) grows on the seaside cliffs of Europe. Over millennia, the domesticated variants have become a common food crop for humans around the globe. Despite their distinct grocery names, kale, collared greens, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts are all just types of cabbage that have been shaped by artificial selection. Of course, “Farmer Jo” loves them all equally.

Today, Jo did her usual thing (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) and gathered up an impressive bundle of greens. Although it was an unusually quiet day at the sanctuary, even around the chimps, the loud crunch of woody stems filled the Greenhouse for a short while. Negra spent the early minutes of the forage collecting the grapes and chow biscuits nearest to the Greenhouse, but missed out on the kale. Upon returning, she sat behind Jody and begged for a piece. Jo ignored her, but eventually discarded enough leafless stalks to satisfy Neggie, who promptly scooped them up and waddled inside.

Compared to the usual dynamics, today’s drama was relatively tame.

The Bounties of Sanctuary

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First, the news you’ve been waiting for: Burrito is back with his group! It’s been two weeks to the day since his encounter with the rattlesnake.

I’m going to be completely honest here. I thought we were going to lose him the day that he was bitten. I also thought we were going to lose him those many months ago when the big conflict that ended our attempts at integrating the groups occurred.

I’m not the most optimistic of people, so take that into consideration (I can picture J.B. giving me a look that says, “you don’t say?!”).

Burrito, however, seems to be an optimist with an incredible will to live. That, combined with an amazing staff and quick-acting veterinarian in Dr. Erin, who has a whole network of medical professionals on speed dial (a particularly grateful shout-out to anesthetist Dalila Fairchild), gave me hope.

What was truly heartwarming, however, was the immediate outpouring of support you all showed, which carried over into last week’s HOOT! virtual event. I really just can’t get over it. THANK YOU!!! You all remind me that there are good, no, not just good, but great people in this world who truly care and take action when needed. It was the bounty of love, even more than the financial contributions, that was so moving.

Anyway, enough of my yammering, here are some awesome photos of the day, most of them taken by Anna and J.B

First order of business for Burrito on the hill: approach Jody for some reassurance:

which she deftly provided, even while managing a bounty of cabbage leaves (thanks, Krissy!)

Burrito decided to stick close to Jody for a bit:

Then he ventured towards Negra, who gave him a reassuring extended arm gesture:

Negra’s bounty was kale:

Appropriately reassured, Burrito settled into foraging on his own:

 

 

Later in the day, it was time for the other group to have access to the Courtyard. To carry the theme of this blog post, I noticed that there was a bounty of grapes hidden under the grape vines on that side of the building.

Here’s a photo of the vines with Honey B at the top of the chute in the background:

Here’s what I picked in just 20 minutes:

Willy B was watching my activity from the Courtyard, so of course grapes were on the menu as part of dinner:

I hope you experienced a bounty of something good this past week too.

Tickle Therapy

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It looks like today will be Burrito’s last day on restricted activity. Which is great for him, obviously, but a relief for the staff, too, because we can’t keep up with him. He’s just too playful. Thankfully, Nurse Jody took another shift this afternoon and tried to tickle him back to health.

Earlier in the afternoon, we tried to offer Burrito some lunch. It did not go as planned.

He was convinced that it was playtime, not lunchtime. Soon his onion was a toy and he began laughing to himself.

He tossed his green pepper aside and rolled the onion around the room.

He insisted that I stop serving lunch and join him.

He thought it was the funniest onion ever.

It was!

But then he noticed the lettuce on the table behind me. Lettuce is good.

Maybe even better than playing?

Yup.

Oh, but that onion!

Our thanks go out to all the amazing Produce Patrons that keep Burrito and the gang supplied with delicious food (and, er, toys?). Learn how you can be a Produce Patron here.