Mission Statement
To help make every captive gorilla's life as enriched and natural as possible through husbandry and research and to promote education about gorilla conservation in zoos and the wild.
 The Gorilla Haven site features wonderful videos of their 2 Gorillas, Oscar and Joe, in action. We will have them on the site soon.
Rescue story of Juliet
Juliet was our collie mix dog, who had to be euthanized when cancer overtook her. As I was wiping tears away from Juliet's loss at the vets', a woman rushed in kittens she found on the side of the road, near death or dead. One was clinging to life as the vets frantically worked on getting an IV into her tiny little veins, etc. Knowing I'm a push-over, they asked if I wanted a kitten. I started to say 'no' when I saw the kitten was the exact coloring as Juliet.
I believe Juliet's spirit was just leaving her doggy body when the baby kitten's spirit was deciding if she would join her siblings in death or decide to survive - and the two spirits met somewhere and Juliet told the kitten Gorilla Haven was a great place to live, so the kitten decided to survive. We named her Julicat.
Julicat had the run of the 324 acres, but preferred the dog yard and the dog kennel where Juliet lived (see photo of her with pup Maddy). Once at a vet appt with 2 of our larger dogs, 80 pound Koko refused a milkbone, since she was too stressed to eat it. As the vet looked on in amazement, Julicat ate the entire milkbone (almost as big as she was) right under Koko's nose! She clearly had some of Juliet's spirit in her.
Julicat died about 10 feet from Juliet's old dog house last year. I saw her fall from a tree and heard her cry out when she hit the ground - she fell sideways, so vets suspect she had a heart attack and was dead before she hit the ground. She's buried next to Juliet, but both spirits are still around.
A very cute rescue story! Walnut "Wally" Nutt
One dog we named Walnut. He was threatening our cats, so we had to find him another home, and with the help of a local rescue group, after a few foster home failures, etc, he finally was moved to New Jersey, where he was adopted by a 55 year old man who lived with his parents and worked at home - a perfect family! And, as if that weren't perfect enough - the family's name was Nutt. So Wally is now "Walnut Nutt."
The Gorilla Haven founder, Jane, gave us a chuckle when she wrote: "I can't make this stuff up!"
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