Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

valentine

Love for Missy!

by

Continuing our month of love, I have the distinct honor of writing about Missy, in the hopes that she will gain more Chimpanzee Pals.

Missy, in a word, is cool.

She is small in stature, but fits quite firmly in the “small but mighty” category. She packs a lot of muscle and a lot of spirit into a small frame.

Missy leap

Missy was born in captivity in 1975 and was owned by the Buckshire Corporation. She spent many years at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) that was part of New York University. There, she was used for hepatitis vaccine testing and breeding. Missy had two children during her time in biomedical research: Honey B, who lives here now, and Josh, who lives at Center for Great Apes. CGA recently wrote about Josh for an electronic newsletter and shared that he, too is quite small, weighing just 90 pounds! We don’t know Missy’s actual birth date, so we chose a date for her to celebrate: August 23rd.

Missy is very loyal to her boss, Jamie.

Missy reaching for Jamie

When we attempted the introductions between Missy’s group and the group of three that included Missy’s daughter in 2019, we learned that Missy relies on Jamie. I had always thought of Missy as quite self-reliant and confident. When she was separated from Jamie, however, she was as nervous as I’ve ever seen her. Now I think of Missy as a soldier who needs a sergeant. She understands hierarchy and wants to know her place in the order, even if her sergeant can be a bit of a bully (see Love for Jamie).

While Jamie and Honey B are both smarty-pants and mischievous in show-offy ways, Missy is quietly intelligent and clever.

She also knows how to crack herself up. This is one of my all-time favorite caught-on-camera moments of Missy. It’s from 15 years ago, so apologies for the poor quality:

Missy was Annie’s rock for the first decade or so at the sanctuary.

Just tonight, I watched Missy reach out to Annie to give her reassurance and bring her in for a hug when Annie was anxious. To both Missy and Annie’s credit, Annie has blossomed and doesn’t need Missy’s constant presence, but we still consider them best friends.

annie and missy outside

Missy is best known for being a runner. As soon as she had access to a large habitat, she ran. She’s been running ever since. J.B. described it best back then: “She is like a spring that was coiled up for decades, just waiting to be released.”

Missy has a new running buddy! She is thrilled when George, in the other habitat, challenges her to a race.

She can spot a tomato, her most favorite food in the whole wide world, from a hundred yards away. Her August birthday is perfectly timed for peak tomato season.

Are you a runner? Do you love tomatoes? Do you know someone who is / does? Well, then, it’s clearly time to become Missy’s Pal or give the gift of Pal sponsorship to your tomato-loving, uber cool, athletic BFF!

Missy currently has eleven pals. Thank you to those eleven for loving Missy, and thank you to everyone who has signed up to be a Pal or Buddy this month! Your support gives them the individualized care they deserve and keeps this blog going!

Love for Honey B

by

What can we say about Honey B?  Honey B is playful, loyal, highly sensitive, so fun and sassy.  She is also intelligent, clever, sneaky, mischievous and unpredictable.  For all of these reasons, and so many more, we LOVE Honey B!

To a level unlike any other chimpanzee person at CSNW, Honey B keeps us on our toes.  Honey B may very well be systematically taking the Sanctuary apart, as we speak, one screw at a time.  Back in 2023, Honey B took down a panel in one of the greenhouses.  If you haven’t seen it, check it out here, Honey B gets down to business at 1:56.  At the end of each day, the Lead Caregiver has an extensive list to check off in order to safely and properly close up the chimp house for the evening.  Honey B’s antics have added some things to the list.  Such as the time she got a hold of the hose in the middle of the night.  Recently, when we were introducing George to Cy’s group, Honey B decided that “privacy” was overrated and made an adjustment to a paper covered window.  You can also count on Honey B to do what it takes to improve her living situation, whether it’s holding out in the front rooms for some alone time, or when she’s in the mezzanine with Willy B and gets tired of him throwing his bouncy balls around.

Honey B will be turning 37 on June 11th of this year.  She was born at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery to our very own Missy!  According to our records, her father was Herbie, which means that she is half siblings to Cy, Lucky and Rayne.  In 1996, she moved to Wildlife Waystation in California where she lived with Willy B and Mave.  After the facility closed in 2019, Honey B, Willy B and Mave moved to CSNW.

After some unsuccessful introductions, thus far, Honey B is still living with Willy B and Mave.  But she has many friendships with chimps from Cy’s group.  Especially Dora!  When we think of Dora’s best friend, we automatically think of Mave, however Honey B and Dora have a great friendship!  While Dora spends a lot of time lying about, and grooming with Mave, Honey B is for raucous play!

Honey B and I didn’t always get along.  When I first started volunteering in 2019, Honey B and her family were rather new to the sanctuary.  I had never met a chimp before, and I thought that her intense stare and spits to the face were “friendly”.  I soon learned that that was not the case.  It wasn’t until the summer of 2024 – 5 years later – that Honey B decided, out of the blue, that I was alright.  Prior to that time, Honey B would spit in my face, so forcefully that it once went through my mask, up my nose and down my throat!  I have a whole series of photos of myself covered in Honey B’s smoothies.  If I was cleaning in a room adjacent to a space that Honey B occupied  – like when she holds out in the front rooms – she wouldn’t let me or my tools anywhere near the shared mesh.  She would occasionally lure me to her by wiggling her sweet toes at me – you can always get me with a toe wiggle – then scream in my face.   But, once Honey B decided I wasn’t so bad, our relationship blossomed.  I’m always excited when I get a new scratch to the back of my hand or elbow because I know Honey B will be thrilled to spend some time grooming/bonding.  It really is an honor to be friends with the spitfire that is Honey B!

We would like to thank Honey B’s 8 pals for their support each month!  We couldn’t do what we do without it!  Do you have a pal yet?  You can become Honey B’s pal, or any other chimp’s or cow’s pal by clicking here.

Be Mine, Betsy

by

Lovely Betsy Cow is one of the bovine family of four we currently have at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Just like the chimpanzees, each of the cattle have their own very distinct personalities and roles within their group.

Betsy, as the video says, is the quintessential “mom” – much like Jody was for her chimp friends before she passed away.

Betsy is so motherly that she nursed Meredith when Honey had mastitis and she continued to let Nutmeg nurse for years, even after he was twice her size!

Also similar to the chimpanzees, Betsy had a varied past before reaching sanctuary. We know that she was used in the dairy industry for a number of years. We don’t know how many calves she had in total before she was purchased, along with Honey Cow, to be part of a reality television called Utopia where urban folks were brought to a farm in California to learn how to live a rural life. The series didn’t last too long, and when it ended, the producer wanted to send pregnant Betsy and the rest of the family to a sanctuary rather than back to the dairy. So, Farm Sanctuary was contacted, and pregnant Betsy, Honey, and baby Meredith went to their northern California sanctuary.

In 2018, after acquiring some more land, we were contemplating rescuing farmed animals to graze on the greatly expanded pastures. It just so happened that Farm Sanctuary was shutting down their northern California site and looking to place Betsy and her family!

Betsy is someone who I liked right away. Some animals (including humans) take a while to get to know and need a lot of space. Not Betsy. Though she’s she’s very vigilant, she is also curious and is usually the first to approach new people (and lick them, if they will let her).

She’s also the most likely to boldly walk out of her space if there’s a gate open (something Jenna and I both know well now), while the rest of her family watches with more apprehension. She has no hesitation going into the creek to eat the greens there or dunk her face in some mud.

I am so glad that Betsy found her way to us. She has brought me joy  since the day she stepped off the trailer.

Thanks goes to her admirers and current Betsy Buddies: Monica, Jackie and (human) Betsy.

You too can help us celebrate all that Betsy embodies by becoming her Bovine Buddy!

Become a Bovine Buddy

Be mine, Negra

by

Negra is a grumpy old lady. I have a feeling she’s been a grumpy old lady since she was born.

Mind you, we didn’t even know Negra until she was 35 years old. We met during our first trip to the Buckshire Corporation in Pennsylvania, back in 2007. Technically we didn’t even really meet her that time, because she hid behind the solid panel of her cage during most of the visit. My only memory of her from that initial encounter was the sight of her fingers reaching through the food slot, signalling that it was time for more peanuts.

During subsequent trips she started to come out of her shell, but only slightly. She was aloof, overweight, and severely arthritic. Her skin was ashen. In contrast to the others, who studied us intently, spat upon us, and even invited us to play, Negra remained largely disengaged. She seemed to have given up long ago.

Negra in lab cage

Near the end of our final visit, we emerged from the stuffy, windowless basement in which they were kept and removed our PPE. We sat on a nearby picnic table to cool off and began talking about what we thought life might have in store for Negra and her six companions once they made their cross-country journey to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Everyone agreed: Negra was in such a state that if we could just give her one year in sanctuary, we would consider it a victory. It felt like a big if.

For Negra, everything about her life in sanctuary was new. As far as we know, she hadn’t seen the sun or breathed fresh air in decades. As an infant, she had been captured in Africa and shipped to the United States for use as a biomedical research subject. She spent much of her life at the infamous Coulston Foundation in New Mexico, where she was bred to produce more chimpanzees for research and where she underwent regular dartings, biopsies, and surgeries as the subject of hepatitis vaccines safety trials. She had given birth to three children, all taken from her prematurely (and all, thankfully, later released from research as well – Angel and Noah now live at Save the Chimps in Florida and Heidi lives at Chimp Haven in Louisiana). When we met Negra at Buckshire in 2008, she was in a tortuous state of limbo: no longer leased to other laboratories for active research but needlessly confined to a barren cage nonetheless.

The sanctuary in 2008 was still a work in progress. But despite the outdoor area being still unfinished, Negra’s new home gave her room to walk and climb as well as sunshine and nearly endless vistas from every window of her two-story playroom. Somehow, seeing her in the environment of the sanctuary made her sickly state that much more apparent. At the lab, it was to be expected. At the sanctuary, and in the light of day, it was a shocking contrast.

We learned early on that Negra does things in her own time. And by that I mean some other time. Her bed—one of the many simple comforts she was never afforded—became a protective cocoon, the one place where she finally felt safe. We counted ourselves lucky on the rare occasions when she emerged from it to grace us with her presence.

Time passed surprisingly quickly in those early days. As the first anniversary of the chimps’ arrival rolled around, we toasted the fact that Negra had achieved her year in sanctuary. She had done it! And yet, rather than feeling like a the happy ending we envisioned, it started to feel more like a new beginning.

Two years later, we were able to complete the larger outdoor habitat where Negra, at the age of 38, finally stepped all the way outdoors.

It was a big deal to us. Her reaction, on the other hand, was a resounding big whoop…Bed was much warmer and softer, anyway, and far less chimpy and peopley.

But over time she would come to enjoy the outdoors as she does everything else: In her own way and on her own time. She only took advantage of the lower quarter of the 2-acre enclosure, perhaps fearing the thought of being so far away from the comfort and security of the familiar. Still, it was always exciting to catch her outside. Calls could be heard over the staff’s two-way radios whenever she emerged: Negra is outside! Negra is outside! Upon hearing the news, everyone would leave their tasks momentarily to watch her bask, however briefly, in the morning sun.

Negra has now had far more than the single year we had hoped to provide to her in sanctuary. In fact, she has now lived for over 15 years outside that hellish basement. And somehow she actually becomes younger with each passing year.

Last spring, as I was walking to the chimp house, I saw a lone figure moving through the tall grass at the very top of the hill, as far away from the building as you can get. I grabbed a camera with a telephoto lens and raced to catch up, partly to document the occasion but mostly because I couldn’t believe my naked eyes. When I reached the top I saw Negra atop the climbing tower, looking out across the Cascade Mountains and nibbling gently on a pine bough. At the age of 49, she was still recovering, still making progress, just as she does everything else: in her own time.

Of course, neither time nor experience in sanctuary have softened the old lady. Negra, now 50, is still a grump. And she’d still prefer the comfort of a warm nest to an outdoor adventure any day.

But who are we to tell a chimpanzee how to live? I’ll always find joy in witnessing those moments of courage but I recognize that sanctuary means different things to different people. For Negra it means peanuts and lettuce, sweet spring grass, a troll doll companion in the summer, peanut butter food puzzles, wrestling with her friend Burrito, a heaping pile of blankets, an occasional walk through the grass, and, perhaps most importantly, the freedom to choose among them as she pleases.

It’s a life made possible by those who have supported this sanctuary, with a special thanks to Negra’s Pals, Vicki, Monica, Chris & Lee Ann, Donna, Kathleen, Sharlene, Star, Stacey, Lorna, Jean, Melissa & Bruce, Jenny, and Alice.

You can be Negra’s Pal, too, and give this grumpy old lady the Valentine she deserves.

Honey B My Valentine

by

With Honey B recovering from her eye injury, we felt it would be nice for her if she got first dibs on a brand new enrichment toy before the rest of her group. The Round Thingie from the Wildlife Toy Box was one of the items in this past Comfort & Joy auction. A huge thank you to long time sanctuary friend Monica B. for winning this item for Honey B and all the other residents of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest! Thank you so much, Monica!

Honey B was born at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) to mother Missy and father Herbie. Her mother, Missy, has been a resident of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest since the beginning and was part of the original Cle Elum 7. Honey B was taken away from Missy only a few short hours after she was born to be raised by humans. Her father, Herbie, was not only used in testing, he was also used as a breeder and sired a decent amount of offspring, which include Cy, Lucky, and Rayne!

Honey B, along with Willy B and Mave, arrived at CSNW from the now defunct Wildlife Way Station animal rescue in California on August 18, 2019. In April 2022, Honey B, Willy B, and Mave were integrated into a larger group of chimpanzees who also came from WWS. This group also included her half-siblings Cy, Lucky, and Rayne!

Honey B is a very intelligent and very intense individual. When she is getting to know you, she will stare you down to try to figure you out. Caregivers joke around that in these moments, Honey B now knows our social security number, credit card numbers, and what grade point average we got in 4th grade. She is ever observant and loves keeping tabs on the humans, hoping they will slip up at some point (see A Little Bit of Mischief, The Great Hose Heist, CSNW Candid Camera).

A new to you photo of Honey B with a forage bowl accidentally left in the Riverview Green House by a caregiver

The Honey B Stare was how I was introduced to Honey B. I remember it with crystal clarity. It was right after her quarantine period when volunteers were finally given access to that side of the sanctuary, which at the time I was still a volunteer. At this point I heard the hazing stories from other volunteers who served her a meal for the first time. From screaming to spitting smoothie at volunteers to kicking the caging to dominance displays, Honey B was not going to make it easy. I had to psych myself up before I served her lunch for the very first time.

The second I walked into the front room area, her eyes locked on me. The intimidation game had begun. I started with a carrot (a food item that is long enough to if she did try something, I would have time and space to react). Without breaking her stare, she let me put the carrot in her hand and she slowly pulled it through the mesh. She didn’t eat it right away. She just sat there staring at me with carrot in hand.

Finally she brought the carrot up held it with both hands, and snapped it in half and began slowly eating the top end. Keep in mind, she did not break her stare the entire time. This lasted the entire lunch service. It ranks up there of times in my life where I was genuinely intimidated and uncomfortable. Luckily for me, it ended well and she didn’t have any hazing in store for me, unless she’s playing the really long game… which I don’t think anyone would put it past her to play.

Honey B is such an amazing individual. Highly intelligent, very sweet but also very sassy, imaginative and fun loving,  and a woman who knows what she wants. It’s been such an honor to watch her be her individual self and making some new friends (I still think her and Lucky plan beforehand to throw a wrench in caregivers’ shifting plans so they can have the front rooms to themselves for play sessions).

Now that Honey B has more pals who live with her, she would love to have more pals from all over the world to become a Chimpanzee Pal and help keeping the gears in that wheelhouse of a head of hers going with more puzzles!

It’s impossible to not fall in love with Honey B.

And a huge thank you to all of her current Pals!

Monica, Sharlene, Darcy, Carrie, Barbara, Paulette, Sarah, Lana, and Alexsandra. 

Be Mine, Jamie

by

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times, Jamie is a complicated individual.

I love her for (and sometimes relate to) her complicated nature. She has intense interests in very specific things – like boots, and books, and bonobos. And occasional interest in even more things, like mummies.

She is demanding. She gets upset rather easily, and doesn’t shy from showing when she’s upset.

She loves pears, and smoothie, and food puzzles. She’s so intelligent, sometimes it’s scary.

Funny story about the above image – we used to give the chimpanzees raisin board food puzzles that were portable, but Jamie realized that she could use the space above the playroom doors to throw things at the humans from above. A flying boot is one thing, but a flying hunk of Trex is actually pretty dangerous. Since then, all of the raisin boards are on chains and affixed to the caging with a secure lock.

Jamie with food puzzle

I don’t fault Jamie for being on the grumpy and demanding side. She is in an unfair situation, and I think, more than other chimps (as I’ve written about before), she is aware that her situation is unfair.

Jamie began her life, as far as we know, living with an animal trainer. She spent nine years in this world of limbo – somewhere between being a chimpanzee and being a human, and then she was sold to a research facility where she was used for hepatitis testing. You can read more of Jamie’s story on her bio page on the website or this post from many years ago.

But today, Burrito worked his wiles on Jamie and got her to smile and play. Here is the video:

Today was a good day. A relaxed and playful day. But even a challenging day with Jamie is a gift.

For me, Jamie was an easy chimpanzee to fall in love with, despite her challenges:

Thank goodness I’m not alone. Huge thanks to Jamie’s current ten Pals: Monica, Donna, Pam & Marc, Carrie, Sharlene, Kris, Therese, Dusty, Cori, and Heidi.

More people should become Jamie’s Pal!! She is the boss, after all! If my words about her have moved you, perhaps you will become her pal or gift a pal sponsorship for someone you love in honor of the month of love.

Fall in Love with Foxie

by

For the Share the Chimp Love fundraising this year, we are seeking new Chimpanzee Pals (and other donations!) for all of the chimpanzees, and we’re producing videos of each of them so you can get to know them better (Foxie’s video is at the end of this post).

Last night, supporter Monica Best joined an elite group of donors by sponsoring all seven chimpanzees! The heart is starting to fill!

heart filling

Foxie’s video was a really fun montage to put together! Foxie currently has 35 Pals. Will you be her next Chimpanzee Pal?

Learn more about Sharing the Chimp Love.