“Beau is anxious to say hello,” Grayson said as he came from around the corner and attempted to grab Beau’s collar to calm him. But the one-hundred-pound dog had already squeezed his slobbery self under the gate and loped across the open space to where the donkey stood, frozen in alarm. Beau’s hefty tail worked from side to side as he approached the donkey with shameless curiosity and wiggly welcome.
For a split second the donkey held still, taking him in. Then, like a bolt of lightning, he whirled around and struck out with his back left hoof. Yelping in shock, Beau came to an abrupt skid on his haunches. The donkey turned and lowered his head, breathing heavily, while Beau backed up and let out a whimper. The two locked eyes as they circled one another. Donkey: ears flat, head low, nostrils flared. Dog: ears forward, hair raised, nose twitching. The hoof had missed Beau’s chest, but the message it delivered was clear: Stay away. Rebuffed, the dog finally returned to the gate, looking over his shoulder with his tail tucked and eyes filled with confusion. Poor Beau. He’d never been rejected so soundly in his whole life!
“Beau needs to learn to slow down a little,” I said as we huddled over the dog to comfort him. I looked back to see the donkey, still breathing hard and agitated. “He scared the poor guy half to death with all that energy!” Too much, too soon.
That week, we went into action. We posted signs, contacted authorities, and checked with local feed stores. We looked for the donkey’s owner high and low. But no one seemed to be missing a donkey. It was like he appeared out of thin air. Onto our property. Like a rabbit out of a hat.
When the county sheriff stopped by our house, we learned that our situation was far from unique: People simply abandoned their donkeys along country roads when they tired of caring for them, given that the animals have life spans of thirty or forty years. Droughts always bring high numbers of strays, and we were in the middle of a bad one. Many people can’t afford to keep these cute-but-grass-consuming animals who compete for grazing land with cattle, so they dump them off. Without so much as a second thought.
“Yep, novelty wears off real quick,” the sheriff said in his Texas drawl. “Ya see a lotta sad cases out here.” He adjusted his wide-brimmed hat and looked at the donkey. “Now, this fella here is young. He’s not even a mature male, if you know what I mean.” He cleared his throat as we digested the meaning of “mature male” and glanced underneath his thin belly to see what the sheriff was talking about. Aah, yes.
The lawman’s thick mustache twitched as he continued. “It’s pretty typical to see males let loose like this. You don’t see the females as often because they’re better at keeping coyotes away from cattle and goats, but these jacks . . . well, I can’t even get five dollars for ’em at auction. Nobody wants ’em. Basically, they’re worthless animals.”
“But what happens to them if no one takes them from your auction?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.
He paused for a moment. “We try to find a rescue organization that will take ’em. There are some reputable ones around, and they do a good job taking these guys off our hands. Problem is, right now, they’re filled up over their capacity, and it’s tough to place these new strays. Ya hate to think what could happen, but the reality is the state can’t afford to keep feeding ’em indefinitely.”
The donkey’s ears twitched toward us, as if eavesdropping on the discussion of his fate.
Horrified that he might have overheard, I looked at Tom for support and suggested, “How about if we just keep him here until his owners contact your office?” Tom nodded in agreement, and the sheriff beamed.
“Sounds good. Real good. Now, I’ve got three other jacks in my custody . . .” He trailed off, bushy eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.
Tom hurriedly thanked him for his time and said we’d look forward to his call. We parted ways before this whole rescue thing got even more out of hand.
The weeks stretched on, and Lauren, our oldest redhead, came home from college to finish planning her wedding to Robert. It was just a couple of months away, and we had some work to do in order to pull it off. With the five of us all together, we felt like a complete circle once again, a little family staying afloat on a swift river of painting projects and dress fittings. Somehow we limped through the financial disaster that had loomed the night the donkey showed up, and we were managing to barter, trade, and “do it yourself” through the wedding details. Our problems were far from solved, but we did our best to pretend they didn’t exist. At least for now.
A warm stillness hung in the air as we gathered at the fence to look at this wounded, and apparently worthless, stray who had given rescue such a fight. His sores had not yet healed, but he looked remarkably good in spite of the two permanent scars across his nose. Already his thin stomach was filling out, and his patchy hair, without all the burrs and scabs, felt soft under our touch.
There had been no response whatsoever to our search for his owner, and we knew a decision needed to be made. We could turn him over to the county and some unknown future, or we could provide a home for him, at least for now. Obviously, the three kids and I would launch an all-out campaign to keep him.
“Look at him out there. He is pretty sweet,” we pointed out. He nibbled daintily on the green blades of grass and swatted flies with that funny tail of his. He seemed . . . perfectly innocuous. Charming, even.
Tom was having none of this “permanence” thing, and it seemed he had Beau on his side. “I’ve seen the dark side of him,” he rebutted, remembering that first night. “He’s impossible to handle, and he’s stubborn and obviously not very bright. And Beau hates him—don’t you, Beau?” At that, the donkey looked up and gave a snort. He shook his long ears so they flapped together in a kind of ear-clap as if he were replying, “Hey, now! I heard that.”
Beau barked in return. He didn’t exactly hate the donkey after their first encounter. However, the donkey seemed to hate him. They weren’t any closer to friendship, and in fact, they appeared to be in an animal standoff. But I had faith. After all, no one can hate a good yellow Lab. And who could resist such an adorable donkey? I was sure they just needed time to bond. Perhaps Beau could learn to be less extroverted, giving the donkey a chance to see beyond the teeth and tail to the warm heart that was just a bit overeager. Their relationship would take some work.
The kids picked up the lobbying. “Dad, we Googled ‘donkey care’ and found out that donkeys are pretty low maintenance. They don’t need expensive food, they don’t require extra special care, and all they really need is shelter in bad weather. Which we already have.” They pointed to the barn, unused except for storage.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure it’s not as simple as that. It never is. I think a little more research is in order, guys. We just don’t need another mouth to feed,” Tom volleyed, mindful of our precarious bank balance. “Think of the vet bills and hay. I mean, look at him out there. He’s a pig. He’s going to require a lot of food at the rate he’s going.” Then he pulled out the reasoning every parent gives to every child at some point in their lives: “You kids can’t remember to feed the dog, much less a donkey, so don’t expect me to take care of him for you. We’re not keeping him, period.”
Tom did have a point about not remembering to feed the dog; they couldn’t argue that. But of course they insisted that this would be completely different. Despite his tough talk, I’d seen Tom out there trying to befriend the scruffy donkey when he thought no one was looking. Day after day, he sat on a camp chair in the middle of the pasture for long periods of time. He brought a book to read, or watched the birds, or looked at some imaginary point in the distance, in hopes that the donkey would simply become comfortable in his presence. It was as if Tom instinctively knew (unlike Beau) to leave the pace of trust up to the donkey.
At first, the donkey had given the man in the chair a wide berth, grazing in a perimeter far beyond his reach. He shied back from any sudden movement of Tom’s arms. Every now and then he’d look over at Tom, a
ll the while chewing, taking him in, assessing.
Had the donkey been mistreated at the hands of a man in previous encounters? If only he could tell us. I could see that the donkey’s resistance to our rescue had been rooted in some kind of fear, and it broke my heart to think that someone could hurt such a sweet animal.
Gradually, the donkey’s self-designated perimeter around Tom’s chair grew smaller. He inched nearer. And one afternoon, as Tom read his book, he heard the grass rustle behind him. He felt a nose on his shoulder. A sniff on his neck. Lips gently nibbling his collar.
“Hey, Donkey Boy.” Tom’s voice was soft, calm. “That’s a good boy. That’s a good boy.”
He slowly lifted his hand and cupped the donkey’s head. The wall began to crumble.
Brave enough now to come near for a carrot and gentle petting, he still seemed so vulnerable. And was it me, or did his soft brown eyes seem slightly hopeful? Perhaps I was projecting.
“What do the neighbors think about his braying?” Lauren asked, breaking a twig off the tree by the fence. “I actually heard him from way down the road the other day! Sounded like someone was being killed over here.”
Right on cue, the donkey lifted his head and began heaving his sides. His lips pulled back to reveal a big set of teeth as a foghorn-like sound exploded from his mouth. HEE-haw, HEE-haw, HEE-haw, haw, haw. I suppose it could be disturbing if you weren’t used to it, but in truth, I loved hearing his bray because it reminded me of growing up in Mexico as a missionary kid. We’d lived there off and on during my growing-up years. Burros were everywhere, carrying loads of sticks, pulling carts, and posing in their colorful, fringed halters with tourists. I thought they were such beautiful creatures, and I’d try to imitate their brays as we drove past, sticking my head out the car window and letting out a HEE-haw! in what I thought was a friendly overture. Not one of them ever seemed remotely impressed, but that didn’t keep me from trying.
As the donkey’s bray subsided, we considered the pros and cons of keeping him.
“We probably wouldn’t ride him, like we would a real horse, would we?” asked Grayson.
“I guess you could, but it seems like it would be a really slow ride,” Tom replied. “Plus, we’d have to train him, and we don’t know anything about that.”
True, true. Nods all around.
“What if we put him to work around here?” Meghan offered. “We could plant a big garden, and he could pull a plow.”
We thought about that for a minute.
“Nah. That would never happen.”
“Too bad we don’t have a mine,” I laughed. “He could haul wagonloads of gold, and we could all be rich.”
Our chuckles subsided, and I could see that Tom was just one good reason away from letting him stay. Think, family, think.
“Well, he’s fun to look at,” said Grayson, glancing up at his dad.
“Yes! Yes, he is!” we chimed in. “Very fun to look at! And nice to talk about!”
“You mean he’s a conversation piece?” Tom’s voice had softened with his smile at the thought.
“Yeah, like what if we had some weird relatives from the city over, and we didn’t have anything to talk about? We could always just bring them out here to see the donkey, and they’d probably love it.” Grayson was making a solid case here. Just needed one final push . . .
“I bet we could get ten minutes of conversation out of it,” Lauren said in support. “Possibly fifteen. People would find him really interesting.” Four pairs of eyes turned toward Tom with laser-like focus.
“Ah, excellent point. I guess you could say he makes good yard art,” Tom conceded as he opened the gate and stepped close to the donkey. Still moving slowly around him, Tom reached forward to rub the insides of his ears. I felt in my pocket for the carrot slice that I’d brought from the kitchen.
“Listen, you guys.” He took a breath. “We can keep him if . . .”
The cheers from the group nearly drowned the provisional addendum he was about to tack on.
“Ahem!” Tom regained our attention by quashing our congratulatory noise with his hand motions. “As I was saying, we can keep him . . . if he is indeed as low maintenance as you say he will be, if he does not eat too much, and if he is an upstanding citizen around here.”
Simple! Piece of cake! We’ve got this! We went back to cheering, and naturally, our exuberance spooked the donkey in question. With a toss of his head, and hind legs bucking, he spun around and trotted for the far corner of the pasture, but not before snatching the carrot from my hand in a greedy chomp.
Beau barked his opposition to the arrangement, possibly the last voice of reason.
Something told me this was not going to be as simple as I thought.
The donkey’s temporary citizenship gave both Tom and me a mental reprieve from our worries. And it helped me avoid the feeling of defeat that had settled in my stomach, like a wad of cookie dough, which is always a huge mistake to eat in the first place. Watching our new resident become familiar with his home, and learn to trust us in the process, provided a relief valve, not to mention a favorite topic of dinner conversation.
“Hey, have you noticed how the donkey can reach almost every part of his body with his teeth, to scratch wherever he itches? Pass the butter, please.”
“I know! I saw him reach underneath his tail today. He bent completely in half, backward, flipped up his tail, and started scratching it! Rolls, anyone?”
“Seriously, I think he is double-jointed or something. More spaghetti, thank you.”
We quickly learned to watch his velvety ears, which moved constantly. Pricked forward showed his interest and inquisitive nature. Facing backward meant he was afraid, uncertain, displeased. One forward and one back . . . well, it called for interpretation, especially when accompanied by a hoof stomp or tail swish. His ears were a key part of his communication—a silent form of expression that delighted us.
We began to educate ourselves about donkey care: what kind of diet was best, how to groom him, how to care for his hooves, which vaccines he’d need. Our pasture, labeled “unimproved” by the county, was perfect for this animal who was made for arid desert life. The tough native grasses in our six-acre pasture, baked by the Texas sun and blown by incessant winds, would provide enough nutritional roughage without being too rich. The back section of the fenced area included woods that he could use for shade and foraging. He would need little supplemental feed, except perhaps in winter months, or in the peak of summer scorchers, when grass withered to brown dust. There was more to learn than we thought, but the donkey’s gentle temperament invited our attention and affection.
Since he had worked his way into our barn and our hearts, we knew it was time to give him a real name. In our family’s history, we’d ceremoniously christened a succession of pets: Checkers, the springer spaniel with brown and white markings; Buttons and Twix, handsome cat brothers; Wilson, the parakeet we rescued when we found him bouncing across the street like a tennis ball. And there was Angel, the red-tailed hawk Tom once had when he practiced falconry. Even the gerbils and fish had fancy names bestowed upon them during their brief lives in our care.
The challenge had always been to find a moniker that would fit each animal’s personality, yet wouldn’t cause embarrassment if we had to yell the name in public. Over the years, Tom, on the grounds of his manhood, vetoed cutesy names like “Schmoozy,” “Fluffy,” and “Snookums” for our family menagerie, and we agreed it was a reasonable enough guideline to follow. You shouldn’t make a guy who’s most comfortable in camouflage have a pet whose name suggests it should be carried inside a pink purse.
“So what do you think we should call him?” I asked Tom, whose reflection I caught in the mirror while I did double duty—brushing my teeth and inspecting the crow’s-feet around my eyes. “Should we go with something comical since he is, after all, a donkey for crying out loud? Or should we find something sort of stately?” We had never had much trouble deciding with ou
r other pets, but for whatever reason, this was quite the dilemma.
Tom sat on the bed and put on his work shoes. “Not to confuse things, but since we live in Texas, there’s also an abundance of Spanish names we could consider.”
“That’s true!” He knew how much I loved those burros from my childhood. This was getting more complicated by the minute.
We spent some time tossing around various ideas but decided to keep thinking as we went on with our day.
While up on scaffolding, we moved on to the silly: Brae, Harry, Eeyore.
“Having a donkey is fun, but he’s not something I want to make fun of,” Tom objected, dipping his brush into blue paint and wiping the excess on the rim of the can. We crossed those names off our list.
The business of naming him came up at all hours of the day. In the evening, over a mass of open Bride magazines and popcorn, the girls suggested something more serious, more dignified. “What about Jefferson, or Winston? Henry? Roosevelt?” Better, but still not right.
Maybe some biblical inspiration? At bedtime, we considered Balaam; Ichabod; and Jonah, Micah, and all the other minor prophets.
No matter what we tried, nothing seemed to fit. He was the Nameless Braying One of the Pasture, and it bothered us. The weeks drifted by with no solution.
“We can’t just keep calling him ‘Donkey Boy,’” I said as Tom and I unloaded ladders into the barn one afternoon. “It seems a little impersonal, and just slightly like we don’t care.” We stopped to watch him mosey along, enjoying the sunshine, his hooves dragging from one end of the field to the other.
“I know. But the right name is important. You don’t want to mess that up, even for a donkey that we couldn’t get five dollars for.” Tom winked and threw an arm over my shoulder, then quickly removed it in the sticky heat. “You know,” he reflected, “that guy is never in a hurry. It’s like he’s in a time warp. He could never get anywhere in a flash.”
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