Sanctuary

Sani-Terry Grooming

August 30, 2022 by Chad de Bree

After morning cleaning was complete and lunch had been served, I walked around the sanctuary to take photos for this blog. I admit that a good handful of times I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to write about until it comes down to the wire. Not that we have a set time we must have the blog done, we just like to publish it in a time frame to not keep anybody waiting. Inspiration for the blog tends to hit me during this walk around the sanctuary. It usually occurs when during little moments with the chimpanzees.

Today, that inspiration came from Terry. As you may know, Terry LOVES attention. You may have heard his attention-getter in some of the videos. What I have noticed is that besides playing chase with caregivers, Terry really likes grooming with caregivers. This is especially the case with boots. Sometimes tiny rocks get stuck in the treading on the bottom of our boots, and Terry loves to clear them out for us. (Honey B also loves to do this as well.)

Grooming is an important part of a chimpanzee’s social life. When chimpanzees groom, they rid each other of things such as parasites, dead skin, scabs, and any debris caught in their hair. But more importantly, when chimpanzee’s groom with each other, it also helps strengthen and maintain social bonds with one another. When it comes to chimpanzees grooming caregivers, it may be that. There have been some studies that suggest so, and there have been researchers who argue that is not the case. Regardless of what it is, it is enriching for them. And I don’t think any of the caregivers here mind spending 30 minutes or more to this. For me, I consider myself very fortunate to spend this time with someone like Terry. Terry is one of the greatest people you could meet. He is a friend to all.

Don’t forget! You can preview some of the items that will be up for auction during this year’s HOOT! There are some amazing items that will be up for bid both in-person at the gala in Seattle, and online! Be sure to check them out!

Here are some bonus photos of the Guess Who Girl from yesterday’s blog!

Rayne completely relaxed in Riverview Greenhouse

Rayne and Willy B eating lunch in the Oakwood Greenhouse

During lunch yesterday, a train went by. Rayne began to watch it pass by and eat her bag of chow like a bag of popcorn.

Guess Who?!

August 29, 2022 by Grace

Today has been… a day here in the chimp house. Most of the time, you come to the chimp house with a plan- you hype yourself up on the car ride in, telling yourself all will be golden and the chimps will be happy and shift for you no problem. You pull up the driveway listening to what would be your baseball walk-out song if you had one and by the time you get the day going, you’re feelin’ pretty darn good about things.

Sometimes, the chimps let you have the win for that day. And, sometimes, it’s like they all had a before-hours conference call where they decided to take your plan for the day and stomp, not so gently, all over it. Today was the latter. Thankfully, though, cleaning got done (or, most of it) and we are working through the daily check list as I write this blog. Phew!

One of the big factors in our day is the morning cleaning. And whenever we shift the chimps for cleaning, we have two trained staff members complete safety checks before we unlock and enter a space. This includes two independent chimp counts, where each staff member positively identifies each chimp so we can be sure they are not in the area we are wanting to open up. This can be quick, like when the chimps are all lined up for breakfast service… and this can also take a while, say, if the chimps are somewhere out of sight or if they are only granting you visual access to a toe. So, for today’s blog, I wanted to do another installment of “Whos that chimp?!” in honor of today’s shifting woes. 🙂

The scenario: you are doing a chimp ID for Cy’s group, as you are hoping to enter the Oakview Greenhouse for a party set up. This chimp is a little out of range for a quick ID, but you can see some of them. 🙂 I’ll be posting the correct answer in the comments tomorrow morning! And if you need a quick review on how we tell the chimps apart, check out Jenna’s awesome blog post from last week!

Hmm… who could it be?

That’s a pretty good lookin’ hand. Need some more identification, though…

Oh no, they’ve moved and now they are laying in front of another chimp! Shoot. Let’s see what we can see.

Well, that’s a nice ear.

Ok, have you figured it out yet? 🙂 Check back in the comments tomorrow to see if you got it right!

Little Moments On A Sunday

August 28, 2022 by Grace

No matter what day it is or what is going on, there are always little moments in the chimp house that center you. Today’s video is a compilation of these little, precious moments. 🙂 Plus some photos, too!

Gordo in his box:

We also celebrated the lovely weather today with a forage on Young’s Hill! Everyone in Jamie’s group participated and enjoyed fresh corn, mini sweet peppers, and tomatoes.

Missy:

Jody:

Can you spot the Jamie?

Burrito:

Annie, left, and Missy, right:

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Gordo in a Box Saves the Day

August 27, 2022 by Diana

I have a 15 minute long video that I’ve been working on for you all for more than a week, piecing together clips from the security cameras on a particularly busy morning. But, technology is not serving me well, and I’ve been unable to finalize the file for an unknown reason. I showed a very short clip of it during yesterday’s “Insider Briefing” for the Chimpanzees in Need campaign, and now I feel like that was a tremendous tease. Sorry!

It was dinner time and I had been trying to troubleshoot the movie software all day, and I had NO BLOG POST. I was a little panicky. But, don’t worry, Gordo saved me/us.

Yesterday, Gordo wasn’t feeling well and didn’t eat all of his meals, so we’ve been a little concerned. Today, however, he seemed to be back to all of his Gordo ways, including taking his dinner in a box.

This particular box was clear on the other side of the Oakwood Greenhouse, so we had to walk out the door and around the greenhouse to serve him. This is what I saw when I was looking for him from the hallway.

Jenna was able to take these two photos of Gordo finishing off the banana portion of dinner:

I took these while he was eating an onion (yep, the chimps like raw onions!)

We had delayed the handing out of nightbags for his group, and Gordo had gone inside to the front rooms, but he insisted on going all the way back to his box in the greenhouse for the nightbag service:

Supervisors

August 26, 2022 by J.B.

Many people have asked how the chimps cope with all of the construction going on around their home. Let’s take a look!

The Other Tomato Party

August 24, 2022 by Kelsi

Missy had such an amazing birthday party yesterday! Because we had so much to cover for her party we weren’t able to share what happen over on Dora’s side of the building! They also had a lunch forage to celebrate Missy. Please enjoy the video and photos from yesterday!

Willy B with an arm full and a mouth full of chow:

Rayne in all her pepper glory:

A very distinguished Mave:

Mave swooping in to grab tomatoes:

Gordo with a mouth full of what we think is chow:

Sweet Dora:

Missy, I Love You From My Head To-ma-toes

August 23, 2022 by Grace

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the birthday edition of our daily blog! Today, we celebrated Missy’s 47th birthday. She adores all things tomato, so of course we had to have tomatoes at every turn for her birthday party. Missy is a special chimp who is more acrobatic than any human I know- seriously, she will sprint across Young’s Hill in no time. It is very impressive. She often spends time in play sessions with her BFF Annie (there might be a few extra precious clips of this on today’s blog:) ) and she is witty, loyal to her friends, and often too cool for her human caregivers.

Missy’s journey to sanctuary has been a special one. Back in 2014, Diana wrote a blog post about Missy and how she almost didn’t make it to CSNW. Diana said it best, so I have copied some of that blog here:

“About a month before the chimpanzees left Buckshire in Pennsylvania (the private facility that owned them and leased them to different laboratories for decades), all of the chimps had health check-ups. During these check-ups, the veterinarian discovered that Foxie and Missy had uterine tumors.

Buckshire quickly arranged for both of them to have hysterectomies. The surgeries went fine, but when they were transporting Missy back to Buckshire, she crashed. She was brought back to the veterinarian under manual ventilation and had a very weak pulse. From what we were told, they “worked on her for 10 minutes and brought her back.”

We didn’t find out about this until later, and it came as a shock to know that she was so close to not having her chance to enjoy a sanctuary home. It remains a reminder to me that each moment of sanctuary, each moment of life, is invaluable.”

We are grateful every day for Missy, her group of 7, and the newly integrated group of 9. Every moment spent with them or in their presence is unique and priceless.

Happy, happy birthday to you, Missy!!!!

Cy’s group also got to celebrate and that video will be coming tomorrow (thanks, Kelsi!). 🙂

One more note- there is still time to register for the Chimpanzees in Need virtual update meeting on Friday, August 26^th at 4pm PT! We are so close to safely re-homing all of the Wildlife Waystation chimps and this will be a short online Zoom meeting where NAPSA will share updates on construction of new homes, transportation efforts, and where we are with raising the funds to complete the campaign this year. There will also be an update from us, CSNW, on how the 9 are doing! Be sure to register now and tune in for the update.

Now, some photos of Missy throughout the day: