Posts Tagged ‘primate’

Young’s Hill getting closer one pole at a time

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

Last week Keith, CSNW’s founder, and volunteer Laura helped J.B. set some poles for the fence around Young’s Hill. We are building a double fence system with a total of 220 poles, so J.B.’s going to need a lot of help in the coming weeks! If you are interested in doing some physical labor volunteering now or in the future, please contact J.B. – he’d love to hear from you.

Here’s a photo of the first set of poles that went up:

first double poles

Today Denice and some terrific volunteers from Seattle University’s Animal Advocates and the Seattle Animal Defense League are setting more poles. As a big bonus to all of us, they brought vegan donuts from Mighty O in Seattle!! Mighty O donated donuts for last year’s Out of the Box auction Dessert Dash and they were recently crowned the Food Network’s Donut Champions, so this is no small treat for us humans.

Anyway, enough about delicious vegan donuts. Back to the hill. Below is a photo of today’s volunteers setting posts.

volunteers setting posts

And here’s a photo of Negra and Annie. Negra was watching the poles going up. With the two greenhouse panels off, the chimps can see all the work being done on the hill.

Negra Annie looking to Young's Hill

It’s not all about poles, either. If you received our recent e-newsletter, you know that all of the topsoil left over from digging the trench for the primary fence was utilized to make some mounds on the hill. To put these mounds in perspective, here’s a photo of J.B. and Jackie on one set (imagine them as chimps!):

JB Jackie on mounds

Wine grape vines for the chimps

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

It’s that time of year again – right around the time of our wine tasting event, the chimpanzees get to enjoy the bounty from Washington State wine growing too. Thanks to Phil Cline at NHV for letting us pick up a truckload of vine trimmings for the chimps! So far they don’t seem to have a favorite varietal, but just give them time.

I searched for a video to provide a comparison of Jody’s nesting behavior to what chimpanzees do in the wild. Here are a couple, in case you are interested: Female chimpanzee making nest from tree leaves at Gombe Stream National Park and bonobo making a treetop nest. They weren’t easy to find becaues if you do a Google video search for “chimpanzee nesting” – most of the results are videos from Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

An Unusual Play Trio

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

J.B. and I were cleaning the playroom this morning, when we saw Negra, Foxie and Annie playing together. This is quite the unusual trio of playmates, and I’ve never seen Negra play this long in one stretch! There was more than what is shown in the video, but it was challenging filming conditions – through the glass window with the playroom filling up with steam from cleaning. J.B. caught some choice moments, and I know Negra fans will be thrilled.

x-mas tree forage

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Today volunteer Kim brought over a discarded tree from her friend Michelle. Kim “decorated” the tree with food for lunch. Later, volunteer Pam came and told me about a Swedish holiday called St. Knut’s (or Canute’s). It was on January 13th. It seems the chimps celebrated it well, though a bit late…

christmas tree for forage

Jamie’s intense love of boots

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

As a fitting tribute to Kathy Cochran’s birthday, I used the beautiful telephoto lens she gave us way back when with the new camera that the board of directors recently purchased for us. It’s so great to have high quality equipment to capture moments at the sanctuary and share them. Perhaps one of these photos will be in the book Sanctuary: Year Three.

Jamie’s love of boots…

Jamie boot intense 1

Jamie boot intense 2

Jamie boot intense 3

Burrito being playful

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

I have pretty much the best job in the world. Thanks to stellar volunteers Jessica and Lynn, I was able to spend some time with Burrito this morning. He was in a particularly silly mood.

It’s easy to forget everything that he’s been through when he’s so playful. Chimpanzees have very good memories, but I think they are better at living in the moment than most humans. And Burrito is definitely better at remaining childlike.

HALLOWEEN

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

The Halloween / Jamie’s birthday celebration today is perhaps the biggest party we’ve had to date, and the chimpanzees were food grunting and squeaking like they’d happened upon the most exciting food they had ever seen.

Here are a few photos of the festivities:

Jamie looking through a Halloween gift bag. Thanks for all the great new toys, Robbi and Dick!
Jamie looking through a Halloween gift bag

Jamie (and really everyone) enjoyed the juice in Halloween cups with Halloween straws. Thanks, Stephanie!
Jamie drinking juice with a straw

Jody decided to spend her time bobbing for apples in the pool we filled with water:
Jody with apples

Burrito went around to all of the food buckets and picked out the pomegranates, squeaking the entire time. Thanks for the donation to buy produce for the party, Tamela!

Burrito with pomegranates

Burrito eating pomegranate

Jamie opened up all of the pinatas, including this boot pinata (thanks, Felicity!), but she left some nuts behind. Here’s Negra getting what was left behind:
Negra with boot pinata

Foxie kept going back to this bag and peering inside, but she left it for someone else to open. Jamie finally did and Foxie got the troll doll that was in the bag:
Foxie with Halloween bag

Jamie and the Boomer Ball

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Jamie was really making me and Jackie laugh last night:

Thanks for the Boomer Balls!

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

Jody and Missy would like to thank everyone who participated in our recent Chimps’ Choice request by sending Boomer Balls.

Jody with Boomer Ball

The Mural

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Here are some shots of the new mural. Thank you all for donating to this project. Though it was several months ago, you remain permanently appreciated!

Artist Kim in front of the mural, just after completing it.

new mural

Missy checking it out: