We all know that Missy is a bundle of energy. She’s got one speed when she’s on Young’s Hill: FAST. She brings a smile to our faces every time she darts back and forth and up and down the hill, because she’s able to exert her energy in a space larger than she ever would have even imagined of in the lab. It’s so hard to try and think of how she was able to contain that energy in the confined space she had for decades. Now, she’s able to run as fast as she can, climb every structure and post, do her acrobatics on the fire hoses, and if she wants, to sit still. Missy is a very great example of how the chimps now have choices.
Sanctuary
Honoring Jody and All Mothers
Mother’s Day at CSNW is always bittersweet (see J.B.’s fantastic blog post on this topic here). In addition to honoring motherhood, we celebrate Jody’s birthday on this holiday in tribute to the nine babies she had during her time in laboratories. Unfortunately, Jody (like most lab chimp moms) wasn’t allowed to raise her babies; they were taken from her immediately after birth and put into research themselves. Had Jody been a wild chimpanzee, she would have been inseparable from her children for their first five years of life. While we can’t make up for what Jody has endured in her past, we can and do celebrate her today.
Since Jody is all about comfort, her birthday parties usually include mountains of fluffy blankets and fresh straw to nest with.
Jody also loves to eat flowers, so Debbie and volunteer caregiver Stephanie brought lilacs from their gardens.
Jody spent about twenty minutes lying on her back in this nest and holding these lilacs over her head, plucking flowers with her lips like they were grapes.
The rest of the CSNW mamas enjoyed the day, too. Annie loved the lilacs.
Missy’s day was all about adventure, as most of her days are.
Foxie spent the day with her Dora the Explorer and troll dolls.
And Negra enjoyed some quiet solitude.
Happy Mother’s Day to all moms, and happy 38th birthday to the best Jody we know.
A Bittersweet Day
Today is Jody’s 38th birthday. Around here, we celebrate the chimps’ birthdays just as we would our own – a day filled with gifts and activities centered around the birthday guy or gal. Throughout the day, Jody will make giant nests of blankets and straw, pick dandelions from Young’s Hill, and enjoy flowers brought by volunteers and staff. We hope it will be all that Jody could ask for and more. But Jody’s birthday is always bittersweet. Because we don’t know her actual date of birth, we celebrate Jody’s birthday on Mother’s Day as a tribute to the mother that she was and, sadly, could have been if she had been given the chance.
We know very little about Jody’s early years. We are told that she was born in 1975, though these dates are often guesses, and spent some time performing in a circus. Like all chimpanzees in entertainment, she eventually became too strong and willful to control, and at that point she was purchased by the Buckshire Corporation in Pennsylvania.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, demand was high for chimpanzees in the biomedical research community. Chimpanzees were being used to test experimental hepatitis vaccines and other pharmaceuticals, and with the emergence of HIV/AIDS the demand grew even higher. Buckshire purchased chimpanzees from breeders, importers, and circuses and then leased those chimpanzees out to laboratories for profit.
Buckshire leased their chimps primarily to two laboratories: White Sands Research Center, which later became the infamous Coulston Foundation, in New Mexico, and the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, otherwise known as LEMSIP, in New York. In 1981, Jody was shipped to White Sands to be used in hepatitis research and for breeding.
White Sands wasted no time with Jody. Within three days of her arrival, she was housed with a chimpanzee named Tom for breeding. She was routinely anesthetized, or “knocked down” in lab parlance, for physical exams and to be injected or provide blood samples for research. Her first knock down came on her 10th day at the lab. She was 6 years old. She was intubated, her blood was drawn, and she was given a new tattoo – “WSRC #37.”
Over the next year and a half, Jody was regularly transferred between cages. Sometimes she was with another female, sometimes by herself, but usually she was with a male for breeding purposes…Max, Mack, John, Magoo….all in an attempt to create the next generation of lab chimpanzees.
Finally, on August 6, 1982, lab technicians found that they had succeeded in impregnating Jody and she was transferred to the “P.G. Cage” by herself. The following January, Jody gave birth for the first time. The technician’s notes read:
1/4/83 – 4cc Ketaset IM. Delivered infant baby male – taken away to nursery…Baby – Male WSRC #66 OPY – appears healthy.
In the wild, chimpanzee mothers will nurse their babies for the first five years. Their bond is incredibly strong and during that time the entire world revolves around their child, just as it does for human mothers. But Jody never got to nurse her baby, or hold him, or carry him on her back, or teach him about the world. She was immediately knocked down and her baby was stolen. Six weeks after delivering and losing her first baby, Jody was put into a cage with a male named Rufus for breeding, and the cycle continued.
Jody would go on to have eight other babies and two miscarriages and endure at least 52 knockdowns at White Sands. The technician’s notes tell the same story over and over again, with chilling detachment. Jody delivers a baby, and then she is anesthetized with a chemical anesthetic called ketamine (a.k.a. Ketaset or Vetalar) so that the baby can be taken away. The “IM” in these notes stands for “intramuscular” – this is not like slipping something in her drink…she was being stabbed with syringes or shot with darts.
11/23/83 – 4cc Ketaset IM. Delivered healthy infant male #88…removed and taken to nursery
6/20/84 – Found approx. 2-month old fetus + placenta in cage this a.m.
4/26/85 – Delivered healthy looking baby at 10:30pm…3cc Ketaset IM. Not taking care of baby. Infant removed to nursery. Animal does not appear to be feeling well. Did not eat any fruit this date.
3/15/86 – Delivered healthy infant early a.m. this date. 3 1/2 cc Ketaset IM. Mother was leaving infant on the floor – infant removed + taken to nursery. Appears to be a healthy animal #142 Cliff, male.
5/20/87 – Delivered healthy male infant between 11:30 and 12:00 pm…5cc Ketaset IM. Infant male #162 Clay removed and taken to nursery, Mother leaving infant unattended.
4/26/88 – PATHOLOGIST’S NOTE: Bloody mass found in cage – test indicates spontaneous abortion due to acute, hemorrhagic placentitis
1/4/89 – Arrived for night checks at 10:15pm…found infant alive in cage no more than one hour old – mother not taking good care of infant. 4 1/2 cc Ketaset IM. Removed infant male #0187 – appeared healthy.
9/30/90 – Delivered healthy infant female approx. 4 to 6 a.m. this date. Mother not taking good care of infant- leaving infant on floor unattended. 4 1/2 cc Vetalar IM, infant removed to nursery.
1/14/92 – Delivered healthy male at approx. 2:50pm this date. Mother not taking good care of baby. Leaving baby on floor unattended. 4.5 cc Vetalar IM Infant removed at 4:05pm, taken to nursery. Drew milk out for baby.
2/19/93 – Delivered infant early a.m. this date. 0515 hrs found infant on cage floor.Infant very cold. Removed infant immediately to nursery, mother not caring for infant. Infant male #236 Taylor.
Nine babies and two miscarriages in ten years.
The notes repeatedly state that Jody was not taking proper care of her infants, and this was very likely true. Chimpanzees who were stolen from their own mothers shortly after birth and then forced to endure life in a laboratory cage cannot be expected to care for their children properly. And if her date of birth is correct, she was still a child herself when she became pregnant. But the labs also had multiple incentives to take the babies from their mothers right away. First, a hand-reared chimpanzee is often easier to “work with” than a chimpanzee raised by a protective mother. But more importantly, Jody’s purpose at White Sands was to create more chimpanzees. Had she been allowed to raise and nurse her children as mothers in the wild would do, she would only give birth once every five years. By taking her babies away, they could keep her constantly pregnant.
Jody had the potential to be a great mother. She is tender, sensitive, and caring, but also fiercely protective of herself and her family. She deserved to be raised by her own mother and to learn what it is like to be loved unconditionally, and she deserved the chance to show her own children the same love.
One of the difficult things about sanctuaries is that you can’t make everything right again. For Jody, that time has passed. But what we can do, what we must do, is honor Jody and all the mothers whose children were stolen by never allowing this to happen again, and to help Jody heal by making each day more interesting, more exciting, and more hopeful than the last.
Negra and moms
J.B. is working on a post for tomorrow about Jody and her children. We celebrate Jody’s birthday on Mother’s Day because of the many babies she had during her decades before coming to the sanctuary, but she is not the only mom of the group. As far as we know, Jamie never gave birth to any children, but all of the other ladies at the sanctuary – Annie, Missy, Negra, Foxie, and Jody, had multiple children (as far as we know, Burrito was never a father).
Negra’s children bear a remarkable resemblance to her. Luckily her son Noah and daughter Angel are both living at the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world – Save the Chimps in Florida. Negra’s daughter Heidi, remains in limbo at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico.
Here are a few photos from yesterday of Queen Negra and below those are photos of Noah and Angel:
Negra’s son Noah, who lives at Save the Chimps
Negra’s daughter Angel, who also lives at Save the Chimps in Florida
Choices
You’ve probably noticed that all of us here at CSNW get excited when the chimps are out on Young’s Hill. Knowing that they lived for decades in small cages in a windowless basement, we celebrate every minute that they can feel the warmth of the sun on their backs, the dampness of the grass beneath their feet, or the cool breeze through their hair.
This year, it’s been all about Negra. Every chimpanzee does things in her own way, and in her own time, and Negra tends to approach things much more slowly and cautiously than the others. But this spring, she has found her confidence out on the hill. She is often the first one out the door in the morning, and sometimes the only one out in the afternoon. She loves eating her breakfast, or handfuls of spring grass, in the shade of the bamboo or one of the many climbing structures.
This morning, we were thrilled to see her try something she hasn’t done before. She crawled into the underground tunnel and stayed there for about 15 minutes while snacking on grass and dandelion leaves. Every once and a while she’d pop out to grab more grass and then retreat to her hiding spot.
Sometimes, when you provide captive chimpanzees with choices, they’ll surprise you. For a while, we thought that Negra would choose to stay indoors in bed as the other chimps frolicked outside. But when she was ready, she chose to join them.
But as Negra spends more and more time on the hill, it’s worth noting that none of the Cle Elum Seven spend their entire day outside.
In the morning, it’s common to see all seven chimps on the hill, whether we put their breakfast out there or not. Today, Foxie took a Dora and a troll on her morning adventure.
And Missy defied gravity, as she often does.
But when they’ve had enough playing and exploring, the chimps usually head back inside for a nap. They could choose to build a nest outside, but they seem to prefer napping indoors.
The greenhouse is everyone’s favorite spot year round. In the winter, they might wrap themselves up in a blanket on the second level of the platform, where it is warmest. But on a hot day like today, it’s common to see most of the group sprawled out on the lower platforms. They don’t like to be outside in the direct sun for too long, but they love the heat in the greenhouse. It’s like a sauna.
When the chimps want to relax and let their guard down, I think they feel more secure in an environment that is more familiar to them – one that has four walls and a roof.
And I think they also like to keep an eye on what the humans are doing. While we clean the playroom in the morning, Burrito often sits in the window of the greenhouse, watching us. Burrito was raised by humans, so it’s no surprise that he likes to be part of our world and keep up with what we’re doing. But more importantly, he wants to see what kind of food we are going to put out in the playroom once it’s cleaned. One track mind, that guy.
Sometimes the chimps just want to be alone, so you will occasionally find someone in the front rooms while we are cleaning the playroom. This morning, Diana put on some boots for Jamie, and after they walked around the hill she gave them to her. Jamie wore one of the boots to bed and rested her head on the other.
It can be hard to separate your own ideas of what’s best for the chimps from their ideas of what’s best for themselves. On days like today, when it’s 86 degrees and sunny and Jamie is sleeping on the floor inside, I feel like a parent whose kids are inside playing video games on a beautiful day. But that’s a silly way to think. The chimps are most certainly not our kids; in fact, most of them are older than me. And after all, what’s the point of sanctuary if not to give them choices?
Nesting in the Bamboo
We planted some bamboo in the greenhouse this morning. Since chimpanzees are naturally curious and destructive, the plants might not last long, but for now everyone’s leaving them alone for the most part. Jody, however, thinks they make prime nesting material.
Thanks so much to ProVitro Biosciences for the bamboo!