My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  One morning I arrived at the barn to find Pulani humming frantically and pacing the stall. I noticed her stomach quivering. This is it! She’s finally in labor! I thought.

  I turned to run up to the house to get Neva so together we could watch a baby llama come into the world, but as I stepped around the corner into the outer corral, I stopped short. Staring at me with wide curious eyes, wobbly legs, and a sweet shyness was a baby llama with a bit of membrane hanging from its head. My baby llama had arrived and just as with the baby horse, I had missed the delivery by moments. Life can be cruel.

  “Hello,” I said softly, marveling at the newborn’s tiny size and independence. “What are you doing out here? I think your mommy is missing you.”

  I picked him up and carried him back to his mother. His head was the size of my fist, his ears perky, and his lashes as long as a showgirl’s.

  I closed the door to the outer corral and watched mother and baby snuggle.

  Mark joined me and we both noticed Pulani didn’t seem interested in feeding her baby.

  I was told Pulani hadn’t cared for her last baby, which was one of the reasons the previous owner sold her, so I had done enough research to know what I was supposed to do if such a thing happened again.

  “Here I go,” I whispered as I slowly climbed into the stall to intervene. Pulani folded her ears back and lifted her chin in warning. I gulped, my mind spinning with thoughts of motherhood turning my new friend back into a raging protector. Slowly I tied a lead rope to her halter and handed one end to Mark so he could pull her face to the wall like we’d done so many times when I fed her medicine. Once she was secure, I caught the baby, turned him onto his back (no easy feat) to lay him down on a towel to cauterize the umbilical cord by dipping the gooey string hanging off his belly button into a cup of iodine. This was one of those “you’ve come a long way, baby” moments for me, let me tell you.

  “I think we have a boy, don’tcha agree? Doesn’t that little thing look like a baby llama penis?” I said, pointing between the little llama’s legs.

  Mark peered over the fence. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Could be. It’s small.”

  I stared at the little nugget, the size of a marble. “What else could that thing be? This baby has gotta be a boy. Llamas don’t have balls, ya know.”

  “Pulani sure seems to have balls some days.”

  “I’m convinced this is a boy.”

  Mark pulled on the lead rope to wedge Pulani closer up to the wall. “Careful. She’s getting antsy.”

  “She needs to feed him. I’m going to try to move things along,” I said. I started massaging her udders. She kicked a bit and made a mean growling sound so ominous Mark and I both laughed, albeit nervously. I pulled, massaged, and tweaked under her belly, but nothing like milk came out.

  “She’s totally dry,” I said, worried.

  “Are you milking her right?”

  “How would I know? I’ve never even milked a cow, let alone a llama. You want to try?”

  Mark’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, “Not on your life.”

  I grabbed the baby and tried to force his head under the mother’s belly, but Pulani kept moving away, kicking and growling.

  Since all the speculating in the world wasn’t going to make me a llama midwife, I went back to the house and called the only person I knew who might give me answers, a woman I heard about who owned a llama breeding farm. She was generous with her advice, giving me encouragement and urging me to buy a baby bottle and give the baby cow’s milk.

  “That is, as long as the baby isn’t a boy,” she said. “You can’t bottle-feed males. They develop what’s called crazy llama syndrome. Too much handling will make a young male imprint on humans, and when they grow, they get aggressive. Sometimes they have such behavior problems they need to be put down,” she said.

  I got off the phone to return to my llama trauma, feeling damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.

  The baby was licking the walls and acting hungry. No time to waste. I drove to the feed store and bought a lamb nipple and some starter colostrum for newborn livestock. I also picked up a tub of dry goat’s milk, just in case.

  When I got home, I prepared a bottle. I was alone this time, and far more worried about the baby dying than Pulani kicking my brains in. She stomped and put her nose on my head, but she didn’t spit or act more aggressively than that. Deep down, after all our months of togetherness, I think she knew I had good intentions.

  I pried the baby’s mouth open and forced the bottle on his tongue. He didn’t know how to suck, so he just chewed the tip, his tongue darting out as he tried to figure out what this eating thing was all about.

  The taste of that milk seemed to trigger the baby’s instincts. Suddenly, he broke away from me and poked his nose into his mother’s neck and thighs like someone groping in the dark to find a light switch. Pulani understood what he was trying to do and pushed his head with her neck towards her hindquarters. After about five minutes the baby finally found his way under her belly, and soon began suckling. I quietly crept out to give them time alone.

  Throughout the day, I continued to visit the baby, delighted to find him eating every hour or so, just as he was supposed to. I named him Pauli, a combination of both his mother and father’s name.

  I stapled mesh around the outer corral so his willowy body wouldn’t slip out again, and the barn was given over completely to the llamas. Each day I mucked their manure and kept the water fresh and the hay trough filled. More work, but with a tiny llama shyly greeting me and giving me kisses every day, I couldn’t complain.

  Pulani’s prolonged confinement and my determination to make her more civil made me feel more connected now. We’d been through an ordeal together, and come out with mutual respect and trust. Things began working the moment she surrendered her pride and allowed me to help.

  Contemplating it all, I thought that if Mark and I were to survive our own threatening problems, we would have to do the same.

  “I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth anyone’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  BUILDING A MASTERPIECE ON A WEAK FOUNDATION

  Building a million dollar house hadn’t totally satisfied my husband’s newfound passion for wood. As we took long walks, he’d point out the difference between oak and walnut, pine and cherry. He would gasp and swoon over twisted branches filled with burls and knots the way other men would gasp and swoon over a Playboy bunny centerfold. He’d slam on the brakes when he saw a felled tree in someone’s yard, speculating on whether or not they’d let him drag home huge chunks of the tree trunk, then spend half an hour pondering how to get the heavy wood into his truck without a tractor. Plenty of days he arrived home with his truck bed laden with gnarled tree trunks he picked up, bought, or cut down himself. Lord knows how he finagled them into his vehicle because it always took three of us to get them out.

  He would arrive home late for dinner, explaining he’d seen some wild laurel growing by the road, so of course he had to pull over and cut the branches down. Sure enough, his truck would be overflowing with sticks that he’d show off like another man might display his prize tickets to the Super Bowl. The metal building next to his workshop became filled to the rafters with wood for future projects. He continued enrolling in classes to learn how to make things with his new glut of tools and materials. He still didn’t venture into his workshop to work independently ever, but the vacation-like ambience of courses that gave him opportunity to craft with friends meant he had company to share the experience with, and that seemed to be the key to his productivity. Mark never could work alone.

 
Wood became Mark’s favorite topic of conversation and like a good, dutiful wife, I nodded, responding with supportive comments like, “Yeah, that gnarly tree, split down the center by a bolt of lightning, is definitely something I wish I had in the living room,” or “Yeah, it sure would be great if you could chainsaw the neighbor’s tree down in the middle of the night...but, um, in the interest of remaining friends, perhaps you could make do with the other three hundred tree stumps you have piling up at the workshop?”

  He had formed a friendship with a local woman wood turner and taken up wood turning; he now spent his free time with her, making a few huge wooden bowls from tree trunks and stumps, sometimes leaving bark edge on the rims so the vessels looked as primitive and artful as pieces from an otherworldly table in a fantasy movie. My husband liked to do things in a big way, and his wood turning projects, like his house, were no exception. Oiled to bring out the streaks of color and subtle shades in the wood, I was offered one huge bowl after another for popcorn, apples, or anything else I might want to pile into a bowl bigger than a kitchen sink.

  “How about you make some smaller bowls, for salad and such?” I’d suggest, only to be handed a bigger bowl the next day, something that could easily serve as a fishpond if wood were designed to hold water (wood bowls are not, unfortunately).

  Showcasing bowls became a high priority in our decorating scheme, that is, until the bowls gave way to rustic furniture and the house began to fill with homemade chairs sporting legs made of twisted branches with the bark still clinging on the edges, and coffee tables that looked like they belonged in Fred Flintstone’s house, with huge slab tops resting on a base of woven sticks, deer antlers, and logs. The furniture was all beautiful, looking like a cross between something you’d see in the Museum of Natural History and simple items under a tent at a craft fair. Each addition brought us further away from our former Rooms to Go world and closer to a Thoreau-inspired lifestyle where nature rested not just at our fingertips, but under our butts when we sat down to dinner.

  When there wasn’t a surface left on his rustic tables that wasn’t buckling under the weight of an oversized bowl, he moved on to making antler baskets, a tightly woven basket that is anchored to a deer antler serving as a handle. Antler baskets became the container of choice for washcloths, knickknacks, and as a center piece on tables and mantles. He next began creating baskets from other natural materials, his deft hands mastering a variety of complex patterns to braid reed, rope, and vine into homemade country crafts he deemed ‘art.’ I loved his talented projects, but his obsession with crafting felt threatening. There were dozens of people, mostly retirees enjoying crafts as a hobby or uneducated county residents who threw together stick furniture because it brought the family some money on the side as vacation cabin owners gobbled them up, all kicking out folk crafts for festivals and to fill the little county shops, but few of them called themselves artists, or acted as though every project belonged in a museum as my husband seemed to feel about his pursuits.

  Baskets, while more versatile than huge bowls, can fill a house quickly, too, so Mark moved on to brooms. Of course, my husband wasn’t one to make the standard broom on a stick that comes to mind when you think of a broom. His brooms were fastened to antlers, twisted branches, metal rods hand-hammered in a blacksmith shop, or found objects. The broom corn heads whisked and swirled, joined together with more creativity than the most elaborate hairstyle seen at a high school prom.

  The walls were now dripping in art brooms, and I crossed my fingers in hopes that he’d move on to something new, perhaps an obsession for making something less crafty and more utilitarian. Handcrafting was great for the soul and tons of fun for an individual, but I was still waiting for a suitable dining room table, and for all that I was impressed by and adored his talent, country crafts were not going to support a family driven to the brink of bankruptcy.

  “I wish I could make this stuff for a living,” he said wistfully.

  Mark’s obsession with building had slowly but surely emptied our coffers. His unwillingness to deny himself any artistic indulgence made each exciting new dream he pursued a fresh nightmare of financial strain. Throughout our marriage, he had stretched our resources beyond comfort or toleration with endless hobby art projects, crafting, and fanciful remodeling of our Florida home and studios. In Georgia his obsession with design began with a small cabin, then a monster log home, my barn, and two workshops for himself, each and every undertaking coming in way over budget and beyond our means. At the close of each project, he fell into depression with his heart aching to begin something new.

  “Well, this sucks,” Mark said one day as we stood together on our porch overlooking the ducks gently swimming on the pond, their path making ripples in the vibrant reflection of autumn that graced the water.

  “I really believe the house will sell if we lower the price,” I ventured.

  “We can’t afford to retire with less.”

  “We no longer can afford to retire at all.”

  His jaw tightened. “I have faith my house will sell, even at my price. The thing is, we’re going to need a place to live then. I’m going to have to build a house on the other side of the land, one we can afford.”

  “If this house sells...”

  “Actually, I’ve been working on some house plans. I’m going to start building a new house for us next week so we’ll have a place to move to when the time comes.”

  I looked out at the ducks thoughtfully. Had we built a reasonable home from the start, we’d enjoy this striking view forever. This life forever. Happiness forever. Impracticality was tearing our dreams down piece by piece. The madness had to stop.

  “We need to conserve every cent we have to survive until this house sells. We can’t get a mortgage for a second house since we don’t own the land separately from our current mortgage.”

  “Actually, I have worked out a mortgage, a temporary solution. We can pay the debt off when the house sells. The bank is going to release everything outside of the twelve acres listed with the main house. Ronnie and I are going to build a new house for us on the other side of the land, which we will own outright. We’ve decided to start the project this week.”

  “Why would the bank release property if they already have it to secure our debt? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “A new loan is all arranged and in a few weeks we will sign the papers. In the meantime, I’ll use what’s left of our cash to get the project started.”

  “Oh, Mark, you can’t.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off the ducks swimming in the lake. “I’ve got a guy coming to grade the lot tomorrow.”

  My eyes swelled with tears.

  Disgusted, he left the porch.

  Within days, my husband was again lost in his next building project, happily purchasing doors, bathtubs, fireplaces, and beams. In the evenings, he invited me to take a walk to the new house site to admire his work. He talked animatedly of his brilliant creative plans to finish off the house ‘someday’ while I listened, mute.

  Of course, just as I expected, the bank refused to give us a loan for a home on land they already had as security for our original loan. Mark reported the news like a child who had just been told he couldn’t go to his best friend’s party.

  “It isn’t fair,” he claimed.

  “You told me the loan was assured. A done deal.”

  “Well, I thought they’d give it to me.”

  “You have to stop this project,” I implored. “We have to put a freeze on all the spending and hunker down with our last resources to hold out for as long as we can. Maybe the house will sell before we are totally broke.”

  “I can’t stop now. We will lose the thirty grand I’ve invested in grading the lot.”

  “The foundation won’t be lost. The concrete is there, and the materials will save. Things will be fine until we can afford to continue building.
We will only lose a little on the wood frame, which you’ve only just started. But we will lose more if we continue! Perhaps everything!” Perhaps each other, I thought.

  “You have no vision and no faith,” he snarled.

  In the next month Mark spent two hundred thousand dollars more on half a house situated on land belonging to the bank. The last of our money had been wiped out in one last thrill ride on the building merry-go-round.

  With only a small reserve for mortgage payments or living expenses, the months clicked by in an unbearable limbo of stress. We discussed opening a rustic art gallery or a coffee shop with rustic home décor in a showroom out front. This way Mark could make crafts for a living, while I was expected to get up at 5 AM to work the coffee bar and register. The problem was a new business requires investment capital, and we no longer had cash for a life reinvention.

  Mark told me not to worry. He had arranged a bank loan to finance our new business. A sure thing. In good faith I spent days once again putting my bachelor’s degree in business management to work, creating a business plan for the loan he assured me was already approved. We had always been successful working together as a team, so I believed this project, any new project, was key to saving our marriage and getting life back on track. I was excited and ready to dig in and working on a project as a couple.

  Since Mark adamantly insisted we had a foolproof loan from a bank, we decided to pay what was left of our cash to purchase outright the commercial lot he wanted to build on.

  “Doesn’t that have to be a part of the loan for cash flow purposes?” I asked, consider all I learned from our previous business financial experiences. “They don’t give out business loans if you are not investing some cash of your own.”

  “It’s covered,” he said. “The bank assured me they will refund what we spend in advance for the project.”

  “I’ve never heard of that being done.”