Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Cinco Mil de Mayo Party

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In celebration of reaching our goal of 5,000 “likes” (fans) on the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest Facebook page (an increase of over 300 since yesterday!), we threw a Cinco Mil de Mayo party for brunch this morning.

On the menu was guacamole in lettuce with tomatoes and a side of watermelon, accompanied by sparkling seltzer water with lime wedges:

guacamole boat

 

And what’s Cinco de Mayo without a pinata?

cake pinata

 

Negra loves both avocados and lettuce, so she was very pleased with the party menu:

negra guac face

negre lettuce face

 

Missy also really enjoyed the lettuce guacamole wraps. She had a technique of licking the guacamole off first, then eating the lettuce:

missy lettuce face

missy with lettuce

 

Jamie enjoyed the refreshing sparkling water, served in plastic shot glasses:

jamie drink from shot glass

 

Burrito‘s strategy was to gather as many pieces of primate chow as quickly as he could:

fast burrito with chow

 

Annie also enjoyed the chow, though in a slower fashion:

annie with chow

 

Guess who got the pinata? Yes, indeed – the leader of the group, Jamie, claimed it as her own:

jamie with pinata in legs

jamie opening pinata

jamie eat nut from pinata

 

She must have left some nuts inside, though, because Negra was eating a walnut later in the party:

negra eat walnut

 

It was a pretty windy day, but Foxie took some time to explore on Young’s Hill with Dora:

foxie explore with dora

 

Negra decided the party was not complete without fresh grass from the hill, so she went out and helped herself:

negra huge mouthful of grass

 

For dinner, J.B. served the chimps baked sweet potatoes, corn, and celery. Here he is serving celery to Jody:

jb serves celery to jody

 

Of course, dinner was capped off with the traditional Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest night bag of seeds, popcorn, nuts and dried fruit. Jody lied down to eat hers:

jody lying down eating night bag

 

Thanks and happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone who liked the FB page for the first time yesterday and for those friends who recruited new fans of the Cle Elum Seven! Please explore the blog and the rest of the website to learn more about your new friends! And if you’re local, join us on May 20th in Ellensburg for Race for the Apes – our first 5K run / walk fundraiser.

 

Making the “chimp cam”

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We’re so excited to finally be able to share the “chimp cam” videos with everyone and we’re grateful to King 5 News for introducing the chimps to some new people.

Many of you had questions about the new camera, so we put together this video (with some new footage of the chimps!) to show you how it was made. We were able to purchase the camera thanks to a fundraising drive launched by our wonderful blog readers, and volunteers Jakob, Jessy, Rachel, Adrienne, and Janna helped us install the cameras on Young’s Hill.

Unfortunately, the camera won’t allow us to stream live video on the internet. We are still limited by our poor internet connection (that’s life in the country) and, with the size of our enclosures, you wouldn’t see the chimps very often unless we had a lot of cameras (unlike the popular bird’s nest cameras). But we’re always looking for new ways to share the chimps’ lives with you, so we hope to have some more surprises in the future.

Make more friends for the chimps – today!

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The sanctuary is less than 300 fans away from reaching 5,000 “likes” on our Facebook page, so I thought we should try to reach 5,000 today, and we can throw a Cinco (Mil) de Mayo party for the chimps tomorrow!

It’s an ambitious goal for one day, so we really need everyone’s help to spread the word. Tell all of your friends on Facebook to like the CSNW page, and, even if you’re not on Facebook, send an email out to your friends who are and let them know we want them to like our page today. You can send them a link to the full “chimp cam” video that King 5 previewed yesterday to win them over: http://youtu.be/u4i0HhwWKls.

As a bonus, J.B. is going to be posting a video on the Facebook page that he caught on his phone just now of Negra sneaking onto the hill and getting grass, so if you’re a fan of the Cle Elum Seven and not a fan on Facebook, today is your day to rectify that situation!

 

Here’s what our Facebook cover currently looks like – Jody peacefully sleeping in the sandbox:

 

facebook page screenshot Jody sleeping

King 5 link to broadcast

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Here’s the link to the King 5 story that just aired about Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest: http://ow.ly/aGS3M

Thanks Gary and Ken for making the trek out to Cle Elum and for sharing the GoPro footage! And thanks to GoPro camera donors who helped us purchase the camera earlier this year and the special group of volunteers who helped install the camera mounts on Young’s hill (more on that later).

Cle Elum Seven Chimps on King 5 tonight at 5pm

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The chimpanzees had a visit from reporter Gary Chittim and videographer Ken Jones of King 5 today! At least two of the girls were smitten – Jamie checked out their boots and Jody shyly spied on them from the greenhouse.

They will be airing the visit and some unique video footage of the chimpanzees on Seattle’s NBC station tonight at 5pm. I won’t give too much away, but you’ve never seen this perspective of the chimps before.

King5 will have the story on their website after it airs, and we’ll update you with a link as soon as we have it. Post your comments here, on the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest Facebook page and on King 5’s Facebook page as the story airs!

burrito face in camera

In the grass

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Over the last 3 (almost 4!) years, we’ve had tons of blog posts about grass forages (in case you haven’t heard, the Cle Elum Seven love to eat grass!). Oddly enough, the first blog post about grass forages was on May 1, 2009 (almost exactly 3 years ago from today). What’s awesome is that we no longer have to set up a grass “forage” (unless we want to) because the chimps get to harvest it themselves on Young’s Hill. And that’s exactly what they did today. I wasn’t able to catch any photos of her, but even Negra went out a couple of times grabbing big handfuls of grass to take in the Greenhouse.

Burrito:

Jody:

Jamie:

Foxie:

Foxie greeting Jody:

Let it snow!

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Just kidding!

We’re still getting to enjoy beautiful spring-like days here in Cle Elum, but to mix things up a bit, volunteers Stephanie and Katelyn (who drive over from Seattle) stopped at Snoqualmie Pass this morning to pick up some snow for the chimps. Mixed with strawberries and juice, it was a delicious treat! The Cle Elum Seven are certainly not native to the Pacific Northwest, but they certainly know how to make the most of it!

Missy:

Foxie sucking all the juice out of the snow:

Jamie:

Jody:

Annie

But mixing things up for the chimps didn’t stop there. Stephanie brought tons of super soft new blankets for them. Jody was extremely happy. She immediately collected as many as possible and built a giant nest by the barn doors, constantly rubbing them on her face and making an “ahhhh” sound. After a cold snack, new soft blankets were probably right on time. Thanks Stephanie and Katelyn!