Saving Simon

by Jon Katz

  She thanked me for coming. They would follow Simon’s progress on the website. She took my number and said they would call me about a visit. She said I should call if there was anything they could do.

  I said my good-byes. Sometimes, I just know I will not see certain people again, and that was the case with Cindy and Sean. As much as they loved him, I didn’t think they could bear to have Simon in their lives anymore. He was in the past for them, and they knew he was all right now.

  It was an important trip for me. It broke my heart to imagine the wrench for Simon and this family when they had to give up their farm and let him go. It also helped explain how loving and trusting Simon was, and why he loved children so much.

  Beyond that, it showed me that some people had a boundary when it came to compassion, especially for animals. They loved having a donkey, they loved Simon, they hated to lose him. But that was a chapter in their lives. There was a point where they simply had had to let go; they had to take care of themselves and their own lives. That was a kind of compassion, too, a kind of perspective.

  I saw that I needed to understand what had happened to Simon. I needed to put the whole story together, not really for him—he was in good hands now—but because there was something inside of me that I had to come to see and know.

  It seemed that Simon’s life bore out the drama of the donkey. Loved, worked, used, and discarded. He had endured and been reborn into another life.

  FIVE

  The Call to Life

  Simon came to life in stages, slowly, unfurling like one of those slow-motion videos of buds opening in the spring. When I looked at him each morning, I couldn’t see too much difference. If I looked at a photo or video from the previous week, though, his progress was astounding.

  It is always miraculous to watch the way animals heal. They have no therapy, no machines, no expensive procedures, yet their bodies can heal themselves in the most astonishing ways.

  Perhaps it is because they are not aware of their suffering. They don’t know—as humans do—how bad off they are, how much they are struggling or hurting. They feel pain and discomfort, but they don’t dwell there. For Simon, I always thought, pain was a feeling, just like feeling strong or well. A space to cross, something to accept and endure.

  Donkeys are obsessively ritualistic. They do the same things in the same way every day. There were already two trails crisscrossing Simon’s small corral, where he walked on the same path each day, and he could still barely walk at all. He made his rounds in the corral, to the bush on the right, the downed limb on the left, the grass on the other side.

  This seemed to me a miraculous demonstration of his will to live and the healing power of the natural world. Just a few weeks earlier, we had considered putting him down as an act of compassion. Now, we could hardly wait to get out to the barn to see him get healthy. And mercy meant something different.

  I still couldn’t get the neglectful farmer out of my head. What was mercy for him? What was he owed? We could arrest him, trash him on the Internet, make him pay a $125 fine, but I was drawn to the murky questions that no one had answered.

  What is a donkey’s life worth to humans? Is it more than a traffic ticket? Less? Was there any good reason to neglect an animal like this? Any good excuse? If we owed Simon a better life, do we owe the farmer any consideration? Even to the extent of wondering what could have driven a man who lived with animals to such neglect?

  As always with animal issues, I was reminded that Simon was not part of the discussion. The fate of almost all donkeys and many animals lies in human hands, and donkeys have been making their way in the world for a very long time. Simon didn’t ask to go to his new farm, didn’t ask to be rescued, didn’t consent to be adopted by me.

  Perhaps that’s what makes our decisions about animals so intense, so laden, so filled with anger and conflict. The decisions are all ours. All Simon did was to heal, yet that was the most important thing.

  Day by day, his eyes cleared, the cloudiness and infection moving out. He was able to see.

  His ribs were not sticking out any longer, his stomach was beginning to fill out, and he did not look emaciated.

  The fur on his blackened ears began to come in, as well as the fur on his shoulders and back.

  The sores on his back healed.

  The swelling in his jaw decreased, enabling him to chew normally.

  His newly trimmed hooves gave him a solid footing, and he was walking with confidence again.

  One morning in early summer I opened the back door, and I heard a loud and piercing sound echoing off the barns. It sounded like a trumpeting elephant. Rose barked and I froze.

  I looked over to the pasture, and there was Simon, standing by his hay feeder, his big head sticking out, his ears back, releasing a window-shattering bray at the sight of me.

  It was a beautiful sound. I ran back into the house and grabbed my video camera. He was still going by the time I returned. Clearly, his throat and lungs had recovered. His bray was not exactly musical—it was loud and up and down, back and forth, full of wheezes, coughs, and off-key notes.

  Maria came running out. Simon was still braying, and she and I broke into applause. I put the first video up on YouTube, and people loved it. After a few brays, I told Maria “It’s the call to life,” and I started posting it in the mornings, to start my day. Simon’s bray became an affirmation, for me and for many other people.

  There was something both joyous and defiant about the sound. This battered creature who was just learning to walk again seemed to be reminding me to value life, to use my time well, to face adversity with strength and grace.

  It seemed that Simon had won a mighty victory that day, and he was sharing it with me. It was hardly lyrical, but it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. I sometimes cried when I heard it, though more often I laughed.

  The day that Simon first brayed, I decided to go on a short walk with him, out of his small corral and into the larger pasture beyond. There was tall grass there, a couple of apple trees, fallen limbs, and brush that ran along the road. The pasture sloped up a hillside, and was perfect grazing ground for donkeys.

  Lulu and Fanny were still in the smaller pasture behind the farmhouse. It was much too soon to put all three donkeys together. Simon was still too frail to risk getting kicked or chased. And Lulu and Fanny were the royalty of the farm—imperious, coddled, and entitled. We had been warned that Simon would get a skeptical reception from these two strong and powerful sisters. They had had a very different life from Simon’s, bred on a well-run donkey farm, given fresh hay and cookies and shelter and pastures to roam every day of their lives.

  After lunch, I put a couple of apples in my pocket and opened the gate to Simon’s pasture. He was so much better, but his fur was still raggedy and he was shaky if the ground was uneven. The farrier said his legs would hurt for a long time, and we had to be careful not to overdo his exercise. I walked into the pasture and stopped to say hello to Simon—his ears were up and he was watching me closely.

  I patted him on the shoulders, said good afternoon, and then walked over to the corral gate, opened it, and stood on the other side. I’ve learned something about how to communicate with donkeys, and there is no equivalent for donkeys of the “come” command that trained dogs love to respond to. In fact, there is no command at all that works for the donkeys I have known. They are agreeable creatures, but they do not like being told what to do, and if you show that you really want them to do something that doesn’t involve food, you may be standing out in the sun for a long time.

  The downfall of the donkey, his Achilles’ heel, is curiosity. They are intelligent creatures, fascinated by every movement or sound. If you put a watering can in the pasture and it wasn’t there the night before, each donkey will notice it immediately, approach it, and sniff it. They can’t help it. They have to know what is going on. Carol taught me that the best trick to get donkeys to do something—the only trick that works—i
s to make them curious and they will come.

  I didn’t call to Simon to join me or give him anything like a command, or even look at him. I just took a carrot out of my pocket, started chewing on it, and walked a few feet out into the pasture, looking away. I must have shown too much eagerness, because Simon wasn’t moving. He was looking at me, trying to figure out what I wanted. But he wasn’t budging. The sun was getting warm, the flies were circling, and I was getting a bit restless. I do not have a fraction of the patience that donkeys do, but I am just as stubborn. We connect on that level.

  Simon was chewing it over. I could see him looking at me. Every time I had seen him in the pasture, I had brought him food—hay, cookies, carrots, apples. He liked that arrangement and did not really see any reason to change the procedure. If he just stood there, I would probably eventually come to him. It was not his idea to take a walk into the pasture, so why do it?

  There were two reasons, and I was confident both would work, if I stayed patient. One was the carrot he saw me chewing. He would have spotted the others sticking out of my pocket by now, and he wasn’t about to sit around watching me eat his snacks. Secondly, he had not been out of his little corral, and before that, his confining pen, since he arrived at the farm. There was interesting stuff to see out in the big pasture—cars on the road, fallen tree limbs, acres of green grass, and who knows what else.

  I stood there, checking my cell phone messages, eating my carrot, drifting farther out into the pasture. Sometimes that worked with Lulu and Fanny, sometimes not.

  It took about four minutes. I was checking e-mail on my iPhone when I saw Simon trot down the slight incline through the gate. In a few seconds he was alongside of me. I gave him a carrot. I love the smell of the meadow, and Simon seemed to like it, too. The smell of fresh grass is sweet, and I am sure he was drawn to it. In the distance, the village of West Hebron twinkled in the sun.

  Down in the valley, cows spread out over a pasture. A large tractor collecting the first-cut hay was behind them in another field. The blackflies had come out, but not the horseflies. Butterflies were making their little whirlpool circles all over the meadow, and overhead, I heard the lonely and piercing cry of a hawk circling for mice and rabbits. It is one of the loneliest sounds in the world, I told Simon, and one of the most beautiful.

  Once again, I could not help talking to Simon. There is something about a donkey that is companionable, that will open you up, especially if the donkey is Simon, raised from the dead to live a fully appreciated life.

  Simon chewed his carrot thoughtfully and took in his surroundings. He looked somewhat wistfully out into the other pasture, where Lulu and Fanny were standing still, watching. I see, I said. You are probably lonely, probably have been ever since you left your farm, your family, your child.

  Of course he was. Donkeys are herd animals; they are never at ease being alone. They are often used to keep horses company and to guard sheep, but they need other donkeys in their lives. I had learned this from Carol.

  Watching the news, it sometimes seems we live in a cold, angry, and violent world. If you have a rescue donkey who loves people, it seems like a warm and compassionate one.

  My community—my friends, neighbors, blog and book readers—responded to Simon and his healing. I got letters from schoolkids, apples sent via UPS from Oregon, Facebook messages, e-mails, e-cards, flowers, bags of grain. I got blankets woven by donkey lovers. And visits from those in my immediate world. Simon touched people. There are rivers of compassion out there.

  Simon and I began walking together regularly. It wasn’t quite a straight line we followed—it never is with donkeys, even if you lead them by a halter. I explained butterflies to Simon; I waved to the UPS driver coming down the road to the farmhouse. I told Simon about how he delivered packages almost every day, and somehow I found myself explaining the Internet to him.

  Scott, the UPS driver, honked and pulled over. I introduced him to Simon, and he waved. I would soon grow familiar with the sight of Simon over at the pasture gate, getting a carrot from Scott.

  On one of our walks, Simon proved interested in several things: some nettles—painful weeds for humans to touch—were growing by the fence, and he went over to sniff them and eat a few. He was transfixed by a giant limb that had fallen off of a tree, and sniffed every inch of it for ten minutes. And he seemed drawn to a big old rotting tree stump sticking out of the ground. He paused a few times to tear up some grass and to chew it carefully and thoughtfully. His tail flicked away some blackflies. He seemed to want to stay beside me, but paid no attention to me. Simon gave the impression of loving life, of appreciating another shot at it. He always reacted to things as if he were seeing them for the first time. When he came up to a tree branch, he stared at it, sniffed it, nibbled on it as if it were the most miraculous thing in the world.

  As we walked, I talked to Simon, speaking to him to encourage him to live and heal. It was more of a man-to-donkey thing, the age-old dialogue between strange men and asses. I explained that I was a writer. I told him about Lulu and Fanny. I told him the story of how Maria and I met. I told him I would be putting a halter on him soon, and we would be taking walks into the woods, and perhaps down the street into the town.

  The morning of that first walk, I had brought Rose out into the pasture with me, and as we got out into the field, she came near. Simon put his ears down and charged at her. I yelled at her to get away—Simon could have stomped her into pulp in a second—and she ran off. I noticed that Simon did not like dogs, and dogs did not like him. Rose went back to the barn and stayed there.

  Simon and I had gone about fifty yards on our walk that day. I had to be careful not to tire him. Also, if he refused to go back into his corral, I didn’t really have a way of forcing him. Halters don’t work well on donkeys if they don’t want to move. They just stare at you while you pull.

  I decided to be subtle. I turned around slowly and began walking in the opposite direction. Back to the corral. Once there, I would just put some grain in a can and Simon would come readily. I just didn’t want him to get up on that hill, or to trot over to where the girls, Fanny and Lulu, were standing, still staring.

  I walked back a few feet, touching the pocket where one carrot remained. Simon looked up at me, went off a few feet to explore some brush and nibble some leaves, and then turned slowly and started walking toward me.

  There is a point with many animals—dogs, for sure, and, I believe, donkeys, too—where a strong attachment is formed, where you belong to one another, where there is a mutual sense of trust. Donkeys are intensely loyal and affectionate creatures in their own way. They love to serve and connect to their humans. And they are exquisitely sensitive. Simon and I had already been through a powerful bonding process—there are few ways to be more intimate than Simon and I had been these past few weeks as I was caring for him. He had decided to trust me, and I recognized as he followed me back to the corral that I wasn’t really just tricking him. Sure, he wanted the carrot, but more than that, he wanted to be with me. I represented something to him: sustenance, affection, his new life.

  When we got back to the corral, we had been gone about forty-five minutes. I closed the gate. Simon went to the water trough to drink some water. He and I gazed out at the rich valley below us—the view from Bedlam Farm is beautiful—and we saw the cattle vanishing in a fine mist as the temperature dropped and the wind came up. He snorted a bit, nuzzled me with his nose, permitted me to brush him, and then lay down suddenly, exhausted. This was where he would remain for the night, I imagined. He looked up at me as if he wanted me to sit down with him, and perhaps he did. I suspect it was lonely out there at night for a donkey. No donkeys, no people.

  Good evening Simon, I said. Thanks for the walk. Thanks for the company. I sat down next to him and broke the last carrot up into a few pieces. Tomorrow will be a big day for us, I said. I’ve seen you looking at Lulu and Fanny. I’ve seen them looking at you. Tomorrow, you will meet them. I will b
ring them in the far side of the barn, and put up a mesh gate between you and them.

  I had seen the girls and Simon staring at one another, heard the soft braying back and forth. There was a sense of expectation in all three of them, as if they knew their lives were about to change.

  You will get to know each other that way, I told Simon. You’re not ready to be with them yet, but if things go well, perhaps in a couple of weeks you can join them and all be in the same field.

  That night, I read Simon “The Sweetheart,” from Platero and I.

  The story is a sad one, recounting how Platero had to walk or ride past a burro he loves. She was behind a fence and up on the hillside. Platero always wants to go and see her, but his master tells him regretfully that he has no choice but to oppose his loving instincts. Platero’s fair beloved watches him pass, as sad as he, her black eyes filled with reproaches.

  Unwillingly, Platero trots ahead, trying at every opportunity to turn back, his every step a heartbreak.

  I had seen Simon stare longingly at the girls, far up in the other pasture, as if they were some distant thing in a faraway land, beyond his reach, beyond his life.

  That will change soon, I said. They will soon be a part of your life. Donkeys are herd animals; they don’t care to be alone. But anyone who knows donkeys also knows they are romantics. They are quick to fall in love. They have great big hearts.

  SIX

  Sweethearts

  Early the next morning, we let Lulu and Fanny into the south side of the barn. Simon was out in the corral on the north side, and there was a large door with a ramp on his side. The middle of the barn had a wooden gate with wire mesh that could be swung shut. We used it to separate sheep or to lock up the donkeys before the farrier or the vet came.