Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Well, we finally got the snow. It has been snowing nonstop since we showed up at work this morning. Something I love about snow is how serene it is. It makes everything feel quiet around you. However, we have had anything but a quiet day, both sides of the buildings were making a lot of noise! However, Honey B and Mave found a few moments to rest!
I hope you all were able to find some peaceful and calm moments today, like our friends Honey B and Mave did.
Mave:
Honey B:
Last fall, Jamie underwent an exam to follow up on concerns about her reduced activity levels and her growing belly. Both are more common with age, but we thought an exam was warranted to rule out other causes. And indeed, ultrasound examination did reveal a possible cause: the presence of uterine fibroids, which have the potential to cause significant pain and discomfort. After much research and consultation, Dr. Erin decided to take a twofold approach to managing Jamie’s condition: First, Jamie would receive a subcutaneous hormonal implant that would help shrink the fibroids. And second, those fibroids that could be removed would be extracted using a procedure (and specialized piece of equipment) known as MyoSure.
After receiving an anesthetic injection, Jamie is wheeled to the clinic.
Kate Uselman, CRNA, places an endotracheal tube while 4th-year vet student, Larrea Cottingham, observes—Dr. Erin is always happy to help train vet students who are interested in careers in sanctuary medicine! Dr. Dan prepares Jamie for gas anesthesia.
Dr. Chavez performs the MyoSure procedure while Huong Johnson assists with ultrasonography.
The MyoSure procedure utilizes a hysteroscope and a special cutting and extracting wand to visualize and remove the fibroids. The team watches the procedure on the monitor.
Jamie receives the hormonal implant. With chimps, implants are often placed between the shoulder blades so that they don’t try to remove them.
CSNW Vet Assistant, Krissy, monitors Jamie’s vitals as she recovers back in Front Room 1. We loosely ties scarves to the chimps’ wrists and ankles so that they can’t try to climb or walk away before they are coordinated enough to avoid injury. The scarves also help us safely manipulate their body positioning to maintain an open airway. Providing veterinary care to potentially dangerous animals requires creativity!
We’re so grateful to Dr. Dan Low, Kate Uselman, Dr. Chavez, Huong Johnston, Ashley Mellotte, and Larrea Cottingham for volunteering their time and services to help Jamie (and Dan and Kate for also braving a monster snow storm on the pass!). Thanks, as well, to the folks at Hologic for supplying some of the MyoSure equipment. And thanks—as always!—to our own Dr. Erin for all her research, networking, recruiting, and leadership.
Jamie’s care team (Ashley not pictured) poses for a photo while monitoring Jamie’s recovery.
Jamie takes advantage of a Squishmallow-filled nest while recovering—her scarves still tied to her wrists and ankles.
With those pesky scarves untied, it’s time for a drink.
Dr. Erin serves Jamie some baked sweet potato for dinner.
As long as that snow doesn’t hit us down here in the foothills, I’m sure Jamie will be back on her patrols tomorrow—and hopefully, feeling a whole lot better.
The chimp house is a busy place! It’s fun, energetic, and can tend to get a little noisy. From the start of the morning we are on the go- prepping food, serving meals, shifting doors, cleaning enclosures, cleaning toys, making enrichment, washing dishes, doing laundry, making chow bags, making night bags, doing more laundry, staff and interns coming in and out throughout the day, all the while chimps are playing, laughing, grooming, maybe screaming, and nesting!
I know, it’s a lot! That is why when Jamie asks you to go on a walk, it’s really nice to slow down and be in the moment with her. So, if you have had a busy day like we had, join me on a walk with Jamie and Burrito.
Of course, there are some bonus photos too!
Honey B being silly, while eating an apple:
Annie:
Rayne:
Outdoor forages are a great source of enrichment in the warmer months. George got to search for plenty of treats last summer when he was on his own, but today marked the first time that he got to have lunch outside with his new family since they were fully integrated. He was so excited!
Here are a few bonus photos of Foxie taking her dolls along for the ride during her group’s lunch forage:
As we continue our Valentine’s series, we could never forget our dear friend Jody. When I think about sanctuary, Jo embodies what sanctuaries are made for.
Jody was born in 1975, we don’t know her exact birthday, we believe Jody may have been captured in the wild. However, we honor Jody on Mother’s Day, because she took on the role of “Den Mother.” She was the glue of the group. Jody was a protector, she fiercely loved her family and would do anything to ensure their safety, even if it meant that she involved herself in conflict taking on the burden to protect others. In her absence, we have noticed how much she was helping her group navigate conflict and how much she stepped in and took the brunt of it. Losing Jo definitely effected the balance of peace in the group. Jamie’s group has adjusted since, but it is impossible to fill the hole that Jody left, showing us another parallel to human lives. Though someone has passed, we have to figure out how to walk on this earth without them, acknowledging that it won’t be the same, but you rebuild, slowly.
Jody like many other chimp stories, is a heartbreaking one, she was used primarily for breeding during her years in the labs, over her time there she had 9 children and 2 miscarriages. Chimps that were used for breeding in biomedical labs had their children taken away and sadly, Jody was no exception. In between her many pregnancies, the industry managed to also use Jody in hepatitis vaccine research. If you ever met Jody, you know she was born to me a mother, it is a tragedy she was not able to be a mother to her children, but regardless she became the den mother to her group. We do know that 4 of her children made it to sanctuary.
This is Jody when she arrived to the sanctuary.
And Jody after 15 years in sanctuary, almost aging in reverse.
Jody was resilient, deeply loyal, a mediator, and the heart and soul of her group. She was a serious chimp. She did not open up quickly, but once she did, you were apart of her world.
Jojo was best known for her dinosaur food grunts. You would hear these sounds when she was extremely pleased with the food being served.
Jody was known for her elaborate nest building. She was the only chimp to help us get blankets out of the doors and most likely the one who left the pile of blankets in the door!
We often described Jo as more of a serious chimp, but she loved to have fun with her friends too!
Jo was an extremely protective friend. If anyone in her group was out on the Hill and hadn’t come back yet, she would wait at the end of the raceway until they returned.
Jody could also be found in the happy baby pose.
She was an incredibly supportive friend. My favorite story is when Jody would go out every morning with Foxie to climb the Twister, a structure out on Young’s Hill. Jody would go out and climb with Foxie, going only as far as Foxie was comfortable, but always encouraging her to push a little further. Eventually, one day Foxie got to the top and Jody was right there with her the whole time. I think about that moment often. It speaks to who Jody was as a person, supportive, protective, and encouraging.
I think about Jody all the time. I feel a pang of grief every time I do a produce order. I always come across a food or leafy green that Jody would totally get excited for! Jody was so expressive with food. It was so exciting and she was so vocal. Because of this, Jody was an avid forager, aka Farmer Jo, whether that be foliage on the Hill or foraging for produce. She would walk back in with a haul- hands, toes, and mouth full! And if you have ever wondered where the nickname Farmer Jo came from, I think the pictures speak for themselves.
Oh! I almost forgot that Jody once foraged a whole rose bush, fast forward to 7:26!
Let’s not forget the great pumpkin heist! Jamieween is one of our biggest celebrations and every year we put out a big pumpkin on Young’s Hill. The pumpkin heist is something many of us looked forward to every year. To see how Jody would steal or try to stealthily get the whole pumpkin, even though, eventually she would share her winning with Neggie.
She had the cutest nubby toes and a very stabby toenail.
But I miss her heart-shaped browridge the most. Jody had the most captivating eyes, it felt like she could see your soul.
However, something I miss deeply is every night when we would close up the chimp house, we would say “Goodnight”. Jody would give a “Goodnight-grunt” and then everyone else would harmonize after. It was a sweet quiet moment. We don’t hear them do it as often without Jo, but when they do, I feel her presence.
It was an honor to care for Jody and watch her flourish in everything our sanctuary had to offer her. She was provided dignity, choice, and safety. She is deeply missed by her family and her human friends. To gain her trust as a human friend of hers is the greatest privilege you could ever ask for.
Jody currently has 12 pals (in memorial). If you would like to honor sweet Jojo you can donate or become her Chimpanzee Pals (in memorial).
Today we continue our Valentine’s series with some love for Mave.
Mave was born on September 25th, 1989 to mother, Lulu, and father, Conrad, at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP). She is half-siblings with own very own Terry, whose father was also Conrad. We didn’t know this at first but should have guessed by the floof alone. I can only assume Conrad was rather hirsute, as well.
Like all laboratory chimpanzees, Mave was taken from her mother at a very young age. She was immediately paired with another infant chimpanzee named Goliath. Mave was reportedly an anxious infant, and Goliath became her rock. Throughout her childhood in the lab, she would continue to rely on Goliath for support.
When LEMSIP ended its chimpanzee program in 1996, Mave, Goliath, and 30 other chimpanzees were transferred to the Wildlife Waystation in California. Mave and Goliath stayed together at the Waystation until Goliath’s death, some time around 2018. I can only imagine how devastated Mave must have been. She was soon moved to live with Willy B and Honey B, and as the Waystation began to close, this unlikely threesome came to live at CSNW.
Despite her upbringing, Mave has a high degree of social intelligence. Anyone who can successfully navigate life with Honey B and Willy B would have to, I guess. She’s the kind of chimp that can fit into almost any group—she knows who to groom, who to console, who to support, and who to put in their place. And she does this all with a quiet ease that belies her anxious childhood.
A key to her ability to make friends is the thing I consider to be her superpower: hugging. I have to admit, I sometimes tire of people asking if we wish we could hug the chimps. They are adults, they have each other and don’t need us, it’s far too dangerous…I could go on. I really don’t want to hug the chimps. But if I were a chimp? I’d be first in line for a hug from Mave. Despite the disappointing outcome of our initial effort to integrate Mave’s group with Jamie’s, I wall always remember this hug (and I’m sure Burrito will, too).
Within a couple of years of that first attempt, Mave’s group was once again being integrated with another, and this time she met someone who would take all the hugs she had to give: her new friend, Dora.
These two hit it off instantly. Sometimes I wonder if Dora somehow filled that Goliath-shaped hole in Mave’s heart.
But like so many love stories, this one was complicated, as their families didn’t always get along. And eventually the two groups had to be separated. But while the other chimpanzees at the sanctuary remain in their fixed groups, Mave and Dora (better known as Mora) get to cross back and forth between groups so that their friendship can continue.
Like her friends Willy B and Honey B, Mave had a difficult time becoming comfortable with the outdoors. But she worked hard to overcome her fears, and now she can often be found soaking up the sun on one of the platforms in her 2-acre habitat known as the Bray.
We’re grateful to Mave’s Pals for supporting her life in sanctuary. If you’d like to give Mave a (virtual) hug, consider being her Pal today!
I have to confess, I chose Willy B as my subject for this “Love for…” series on a day that he was being particularly difficult to love. He had woken the other chimps up four times the previous night with his incessant banging and antagonizing, and thanks to the magic of closed circuit camera technology, I’d also had the pleasure of lying awake and listening to his late night performances. The lack of sleep initially made it hard for me to muster up much sympathy for the guy. But isn’t that the perfect time to remind myself—and you—what makes him so deserving of our love?
Willy B was born on November 30th, 1990, at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) in New York. According to his records, his father was Stu. His mother is known to us only by the number that would have been tattooed across her chest: 526. The “B” in Willy B’s name served as a reminder that although he was born at LEMSIP, one or both of his parents belonged to the Buckshire Corporation, making Willy B their property, too. Like his companions, Willy spent much of his childhood in a cage suspended off the floor.
When LEMSIP ended its chimpanzee program in 1996, Willy B was transferred with over 30 other chimpanzees to the Wildlife Waystation in California. He would remain there until 2019, when it too began to close down.
We selected Willy B and his companions, Honey B and Mave, to be the first of the Waystation chimpanzees to move to CSNW due to their small social group and relative isolation at the facility. Willy was our main road trip companion for the 1,000-mile journey, as his transport cage occupied the space just behind the driver’s seat. And I am still feeling the adrenaline from the time he went from sound asleep to trying to topple the van over with his intense cage-shaking on a busy section of I-5 in Central California, all in the blink of an eye.
Little did I know it then, but that incident would be a metaphor for life with Willy. I’ve written about his challenges before so I won’t belabor the point here, other than to say that he has thus far had a hard time remaining in good standing in social groups with anyone other than his two original companions, who have a tolerance for his shenanigans worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. But knowing how he was raised, we shouldn’t wonder why he struggles with being social. The question is, why don’t they all?
And when you consider how far he has come, Willy’s story is less a tragedy and more a story of hope. Watching him overcome his fear of the outdoors was one of the most inspiring things I’ve been privileged to witness.
And despite the two-year integration of Willy’s group and Cy’s group ultimately ending in failure due to Willy’s chronic self-sabotaging behavior, he managed to make many new friends who often brought out the best in him. He will certainly have more opportunities for additional companionship in the future.
Even when he’s at his most chaotic, you can’t help but love Willy for his endearing quirks. Like the way he plays chase with his caregivers—no eye contact allowed! Or his childlike amusement with Slinkies and bouncy balls. Or his incessant requests to watch videos on our phones, specifically videos of the cute girls (like Jamie) next door. Or the way he is compelled to maximize the crunching sounds when he eats lettuce and celery by chomping down with his molars with his mouth wide open.
It’s true, Willy B can be a but much sometimes. There are times when he is even too much for himself, and he has to find a quiet, secluded place to reset.
I talk a lot about how much I admire Cy and Rayne, and they deserve every ounce of our admiration. But do all of our heroes have to be so noble? What about the guy that was born with the deck stacked against him and gets just a little bit better each day? What about the guy who has to struggle to be good? Isn’t that struggle itself something to be admired? True or not, this is what I will be telling myself when Willy B wakes us up again tonight.
Because I love Willy B, despite who he is and—even more so—because of who he is. We’re so grateful for his Pals who feel the same way, and we hope you will consider sponsoring him, too.
