Seriously Mum, Where's that Donkey?

by Parks, Alan

  Justin leaned in and pulled out the trap. As he turned around I could see tears in his eyes. Then I saw it: quite a large snake, trapped. It was beautiful, but was obviously dead. He lifted the trap mechanism and the snake fell to the ground in two pieces. Not only was he distraught to realise that he had been responsible for the death of this beautiful creature but of course the snake had been hunting the rats too. Justin was upset for a while, but a cup of tea and some cake made him feel a little better and we spent the rest of the day talking alpacas and catching up. Lovely.

  At about 10pm, we decided we needed to make a move. We had a long drive and it was late - as it was we wouldn’t be getting home until about 12.30. We said our goodbyes and hit the road.

  After an hour or so on the road, the orange light that indicates low petrol started to flash on and off. I kept quiet for a while. A little bit later, it stayed on continually. We had passed the last petrol station a while back, and I was hoping we would make a few kilometres further to the next gas station. We passed Cordoba and as there is a station about 5km further on, we decided against going into the city for petrol. Literally, just past the city outskirts, Frank started to cough and splutter so I took the next exit, which was a service road. Frank died. But then he started up again and I thought we might make the extra kilometres to the petrol station. I started to pull back out and he died again, this time right on the motorway. I pulled over as far as possible and dug out the yellow vests and red triangle that we are required by law to carry. I told Lorna that I would walk the relatively short distance to the station and buy a plastic jerry can and fill it up. I didn’t want to leave her as it was now about 11.30, but it was the only option.

  The journey to the station was long and dark, and involved crossing a bridge on the wrong side of the motorway barrier with only a small ledge to walk on. I held on for dear life. When I reached the station it seemed to be closing. Oh shit, I thought. What do I do now? But I managed to persuade the attendant to sell me a jerry can and let me fill it up. I started the long trek back. After a few minutes, a Guardia Civil car pulled up next to me with its lights flashing. A man with a large cigar and mirrored sunglasses (it was about midnight by now) grunted at me and pointed to the back seat. Unbeknown to me these officers had stopped to see if Lorna was OK, and she had been able to explain that I was getting petrol so they had come to collect me. I endured an uncomfortable few minutes in the car with no explanation as to what was happening and, to top it off, the flyover they used was the prison turn-off! I thought I was in deep trouble for walking on the motorway.

  When we got back to the car, Lorna explained what had happened. The officer took out their flashing batons to wave cars around us while I put the petrol in. The man with the cigar stood looking over my shoulder the whole time, still smoking it!

  They waved us on our way, and by the time we got home it was now gone 1am. We were exhausted. Yet another experience in the ongoing chronicles of Alan and Lorna!

  Chapter 28

  Nakedness and the Donkey Man

  One of the benefits of living deep in the countryside with no near neighbours is the feeling of freedom. If you speak to many an expat who lives like this, after a year or two or sometimes even sooner, clothes start to come off. In the heat of the Spanish summer, it gets unbearable so as little clothing as possible touching your skin is desirable.

  Justin was telling us a story one day of how, whilst strimming the garden of weeds, he waved to Raul, his neighbour who was on a tractor driving past their fence at the bottom of the garden. The next thing he heard was a scream, and then his wife, Kim, came running up to him covering herself with a towel.

  “Argh, Justin,” she said, hitting him with the book in her hand. “Why didn’t you call me? I was lying by the pool, completely naked when Raul went past. His eyes nearly popped out of his head! I could kill you!”

  Justin was flabbergasted; he didn’t even know she had been sunbathing in the nude. Apparently, or so the story goes, he just muttered to himself and got on with his gardening. Kim, I assume went back to the pool, this time wearing her swimming costume.

  A week or two later and thinking that the passing tractor was a one-off, or that Raul had been scared off from passing by their house, Kim reverted to her ‘natural’ state. She was gardening naked, pruning her rosebush when she spotted a helicopter in the sky. Helicopters are quite common in Andalucia, particularly in the summer months when there is a high risk of fire. Kim was absent-mindedly watching it flying over the land, completely forgetting about her lack of clothes. As the helicopter flew closer and closer and she was wondering what they were looking at, Justin returned home in the car to find his wife, standing in the garden stark naked watching two men in a chopper watching her. He ran out of the car with a towel (kept for the dogs), threw it around Kim and ushered her inside.

  Lorna has also taken to sunbathing naked by the pool, under the pretence of saving washing and not getting tan lines. However, I think she just really likes to do it! There is fencing around the pool area and in the summer hardly a car goes past but if it does she covers herself up, normally with the book she is reading, and waits until they have gone. The fencing is adequate enough to protect her privacy to a degree. On one occasion, she must have been so engrossed in her book so as not to have heard an approaching car, and was startled by shouts of, “Señora, señora.” She tried to cover up with her paperback and called back, “¿Si?” There was a man outside looking for his donkey, but all Lorna could understand was burro and whilst still trying to keep decent and telling the man to wait, she was calling for me.

  I was in the kitchen and heard distant voices. Eventually, I poked my head out and said, “Were you calling?”

  There was Lorna, curled up into her sun-lounger attempting to keep her modesty intact. “Yes! Where were you? Ramon is outside looking for a donkey or something.”

  So I went out to look. It wasn’t Ramon, but a man who rents a hillside across from our Olive Mill where he keeps donkeys, sometimes one, two or even three. They have escaped on many occasions, but they normally return when called when he and his brothers arrive to feed them. The donkeys come trotting out from wherever they are in the olive groves. This time, however, he could not find one so he was asking if we had seen him. I told him that I had seen a white donkey a few days before but not since, and when I did, he was close to his field. The man looked disappointed, but I couldn’t be of any more help. We said adios and he got in his car to carry on searching.

  A couple of days later, we noticed that the donkey had still not returned home (well, we hadn’t seen him in his field) and we were leaving for Zumba in a hurry, as always with the heat cranking up. The temperature in the car was about 40 degrees. As we got towards the top of our track, we saw the donkey. We had no time to do anything about it, and no contact number to call, but I promised Lorna that if he was still there when we came home (four hours later) we would try and get him back to the field.

  On our return we did indeed see the donkey, still hovering in the same spot, looking a bit lost. Lorna got out of the car and approached him. (We knew it was a him; there was a very big, and very obvious giveaway.) He had a broken piece of rope attached to a halter, which he allowed Lorna to take hold of. She tried to lead him but he would not budge. After a few minutes of both of us trying, we decided to drive home to get a bit of the alpacas’ food and some water to use as an incentive to get him to follow us. Even if we could get him close to his paddock, at least he would be in the right area. After driving home and grabbing a bucket, water and food we headed back to the spot where he was. Or, rather, where he had been!

  “Where’s the donkey?” exclaimed Lorna.

  We drove up and down looking left and right but couldn’t see him. It was getting dark so we had to give up, but vowed to try again in the morning.

  The following day, we headed out first thing before it got too hot. This time we were lucky as the donkey had returned to the place where we had seen him
the previous night. At first he was a little unsure, but Lorna offered him some food and he slowly came towards her and took it, a few steps at a time, while I followed behind in the car at a fair distance so as not to frighten him. Once he got the idea, he started moving quickly and was so keen to get the food that Lorna had to keep pushing him away.

  After a few minutes, we reached the bottom of the track where there is an entrance to Miguel’s land, and where the donkey is kept. The gate was locked so we parked and walked the donkey around the side as there is no fence at that point. About 200 metres up the track, there is another of Miguel’s gates with a fake padlock where his horses are kept in by a barbed-wire fence. Halfway up the hill, there is a ‘Spanish gate’ where the wire fence is looped over a pole to keep the fencing secure. The donkey stepped straight over the wire fencing back into his paddock and I hurriedly tried to reassemble it, cutting my fingers and arms whilst struggling with it. As we walked back down the hill, the donkey strolled along the fence beside us, and when we passed through the gate he stood there watching us leave. He looked very sad. The same afternoon we saw the donkey man arrive and go up to the field and find him there, but he didn’t come and say thank you. I am not too sure how he thought his donkey had found his way home.

  A few days later we looked out one morning and the donkey was outside our fence, looking right at the alpacas. We didn’t bother to take him back to his field and, once again, later that day we could hear the sound of the donkey man calling through the olive groves trying to hunt down his elusive friend.

  Chapter 29

  Third Time Lucky?

  I popped in to see Manuel to collect the forms and results of the alpaca blood tests. All the tests from brucellosis and bTB were negative as we had expected.

  “What about the girls' toxoplasmosis tests?” I asked.

  “Well, they have all tested positive for toxoplasmosis, but it is not possible to tell if this is a current infection or antibodies from an old one.”

  “OK. Leave it with me, I’ll do some research into this.”

  I spoke to one of the top alpaca vets in the UK and she said that she felt that it was highly unlikely that the problems we had had with both of Lily’s crias would have been caused by toxoplasmosis. Once they had had an active infection, it would not normally recur. We discussed various options and timings of breeding to ensure that the girls would be kept as stress free as possible during their pregnancies. We decided that around November would be a reasonable time to have the crias born. It is not the coldest time of the year, but is past the time when the flies are at their worst. It would also mean that the girls would be six months pregnant at shearing time, and hopefully not be too heavily pregnant during the hottest part of year. So the decision had been made.

  The next question was which of our beautiful boys to give the chance to father the next generation of crias at the Olive Mill? Rafa is Cassandra’s son, and although his fleece isn’t the greatest, his sire is Tulaco Centurian, who has been a fawn supreme champion multiple times in the UK. Rafa is the only alpaca with these genes in the whole of Spain so it would seem sensible to give him the chance to see if he can produce a good quality cria. That was fixed then: Rafa would mate with Lily. They are both white so we would expect to get a white cria from the union.

  As two of our boys belong to Cassandra, that left the remaining three to choose from to be the father of her next cria. Santa, Bermuda’s baby, is probably our best alpaca. His fleece is really dense and at shearing time he produces the highest weight of fleece of all of the animals. We would love to see if he can do great things, so Cassandra will probably enjoy a date with Santa sometime in the autumn.

  That left Bermuda. We really love multi-coloured animals and, as we have mostly white, thought we might mix things up a little with Bermuda, and give our little dark brown Galaxy his chance to shine. Who knows what colour they might produce between them? As long as it is healthy we won’t really mind too much.

  Once mated we will then have an anxious wait for nearly a whole year until these babies are born. The first three months and the last three are the most critical. We can only keep our fingers crossed, hope the crias develop well and the girls stay healthy. I’m sure, like us, everyone is keen to know whether or not Lily successfully manages to deliver a healthy cria. If it doesn’t happen this time, we will retire her and not try any more as it is too heartbreaking, both for her and for us.

  This chapter was due to end here, with a little aside saying how we would be looking forward to late autumn next year when, hopefully, we would have some healthy new young babies on the ground. The alpacas, however, (as always) had other ideas.

  Although we have had problems with escapes and accidental pregnancies in the past, we haven’t had any issues for the past few months. I patched up the holes in the fences and the summer has passed by pretty quietly. The boys have even been getting on well, and fighting hasn’t been an issue.

  The evening after I had spoken to the vet in the UK, I could hear one of the boys humming, in what sounded to me like distress. I looked over the wall to see Galaxy and the grey boys looking anxiously over the gate. I knew immediately what was going on and rushed around to find Santa and Rafa in with the girls. Rafa was an innocent bystander, but Santa was on Cassandra’s back and orgling for all his worth. The positioning was awkward as Cassandra had planted herself by a fence, so Santa’s legs were caught in it and I could see his penis waving around as he tried to get in place. Bermuda was sitting practically on top of Cassandra waiting her turn.

  This was a surprise. Last year in the autumn, we had decided to try and mate them before we knew about the toxoplasmosis but the girls were not at all interested, so I was somewhat taken aback at the scene unfolding before my eyes. I hauled Santa off and chased him and Rafa back to their paddock. No damage had been done as I had got there before they had consumated. I was pleased that the girls looked as though they were keen to mate, though. How did they know that we had spoken to the vet and decided that the time was right? Somehow they did; we were ready to start organising these mating sessions as we wanted them to go smoothly.

  About four o’clock in the morning a few days later and with a bright, full moon in the sky, the dogs suddenly started baying to be let out. For a few minutes I assumed the boy alpacas were fighting as this had resumed since the escape and attempted mating episode, but after a bit I decided I should check.

  I went outside wearing just a pair of boxer shorts and broken sandals. I had been wearing the sandals all summer and could hardly walk in them. I looked over the wall, using my wind-up torch for light, and could only see Rafa and Galaxy. This time, Santa was out with Eduardo and Marcus. I ran around to the girls’ paddock to find a stand-off. The three of them were looking at the three boys while Eduardo was trying it on with Cassandra, who rewarded his efforts by spitting at him. That is normally the first sign of a pregnant alpaca.

  I could see all three girls’ tails were looking as though they might have seen some action and tried to shepherd the boys back to their paddock, but I couldn’t move fast and the torch I was using was upsetting them. My feet were covered in alpaca poo as I couldn’t see where I was stepping, and the mosquitoes were biting the bejesus out of me as I had no T-shirt on. After a few minutes, Lorna called out of the window, “Is everything OK?”

  “No, not really,” I shouted. “Can you come out and help?”

  So she appeared from around the corner, in her underwear and flip-flops and, between us, we managed to remove the boys and move the girls to a small paddock where they couldn’t be got at. By the time we made it back to bed we were both covered in bites and thankful that, at that time of the morning, for once, there were no Spanish farmers around to see our moonlit activities.

  So now, it looks as though we might be expecting teeny tiny alpaca babies at the start of September next year!

  We will keep a close eye on them, and try and keep them as stress free as possible, and pray, and keep our
fingers crossed that our Lily has a strong and healthy cria.

  Over the last few years we have had many ups and downs, probably as many ups as downs, if I am honest. But throughout it all we have truly fallen in love with Andaucia, and Montoro in particular.

  We don't know whether, one day, we might choose to move to another part of Spain, or, as we get older, even decide to return to the UK. One thing is for certain though. Both Lorna and I agree that, if we could pick up The Olive Mill, and Montoro, and take them with us, we would.

  This year has been much harder, almost too much. The kids are now almost ready to fend for themselves. There were four of them this year, and the winter was hard going. It has taken its toll on me. I think it is time for me to move on to pastures new. I am going to let one of the children take over for me here, so I can go and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet somewhere out of the way. I might pop back every now and then to see how things are going, but who knows what the future holds?

  I have seen a lot in my time here: the new people coming to the Olive Mill; slowly learning to trust them; the strange animals they brought; and the wide variety of food we have been given when they have friends over. One person even cooked a whole spaghetti bolognese just for us cats. I have seen my babies grow up and leave home, and some who didn’t even get to grow up. The Olive Mill has changed beyond all recognition over the last five years, and hopefully now it is a great place for these kids and future kids to grow up and continue my legacy. It would be nice to think of generation after generation continuing to call this wonderful place home. However, for me it is time to say goodbye.

  Barb

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