Donkey Work

by Doreen Tovey

  We certainly couldn't tell with Annabel. One minute we thought she was and prescribed plenty of greens for vitamins. Her own paddock being threadbare after the winter's eating we tethered her up on the hill to get them, trekked leisurely back to the cottage – and within minutes were running back up again like mad. Annabel, by way of amusement and pre­sumably trying to snap her tether at the same time, was up there galloping furiously down the slope like the Charge of the Light Brigade, pulling taut on the end of her rope with a jerk that must be knocking the triplets for six if she had them, plod­ding steadfastly back to the starting point like a skier returning up a ski-run, and doing it over again.

  Later we decided she couldn't possibly be in foal, the trouble was she was eating too much and we ought to cut her rations down. The result of that was that Annabel's stomach, which despite her non-stop eating habits had rumbled at intervals ever since we'd known her like a distant train on the Underground, now began to rumble more loudly, like an incipiently active volcano. The day we gave her a reduced allowance of hay, stayed to clean out her house, heard what we thought was Timothy trundling his go-cart down the lane and looked up to discover that it wasn't Timothy at all but Annabel's stomach rumbling, we gave up putting her on a diet. We decided to let nature take its course, fed her so that her stomach remained muted though steadfastly barrel-shaped, and waited. For what looked like being rather a long wait, seeing that it takes a horse eleven months to foal; presumably (though we couldn't find it even in Britannica) it takes a donkey the same; and it would be October before we knew.

  Meanwhile, so that we wouldn't get ennuied while we waited, the bird-mating season set in at the cottage. Missel thrushes nested trustingly in the damson tree, we showed them by way of a treat to Miss Wellington, and created a ripe old situation there. We had Miss Wellington hovering constantly by our gate in case when the young were hatched they fell out on to our path. Miss Wellington nipping smartly across to the hedge to pick dandelions when anybody passed – 'To make wine,' she informed passers-by; 'To put them off the scent,' she advised us; with the result that after being put off the scent daily for a week Father Adams enquired interestedly of us what th'old girl was making as much wine as that for; planning a Batchanalia? When the birds hatched they did start falling out, too, and, as nutty as Miss Wellington, we put straw down for them to fall on and kept going out when she wasn't around to return them to the nest.

  How they escaped the cats was a miracle, said Miss Wellington. Actually it was because the mouse-hunting season had started also and our March of the Siamese Cats was returning, not, as it often did, via the front gate with an excursion up the damson tree for exercise, but in a crow's flight line from the paddock. Over the wall, down the path, up the stairs to our bedroom where they usually stored their catches and where one day, to our horror, we found they had stored a rat. Only a young one, stone-cold dead on its back, but where there was one there were others.

  There were, when we started to look for them, dozens. Multiplying like flies, no doubt, with the warmer weather; attracted by Annabel's bread; and coming not only from the walls of her house but trekking, at feeding time, down the valley. Like a portage procession through the Khyber Pass, said Charles, who watched astounded one morning from across on the hillside as they filed familiarly down a track from some ruins in a neighbouring field, disappeared into Annabel's house, and a second or two later filed familiarly back up again carrying whacking great lumps of bread.

  Something had to be done, of course. We couldn't leave the cats to deal with them – otherwise, as we knew full well, one day they'd come up against a big one and somebody would be bitten. We couldn't trap them on account of the danger to the birds and cats. We couldn't call in the Pest Officer and have them poisoned for the same reason. On the other hand, for our own sakes and everybody else's, we couldn't have them multiplying like this. So Charles, with the cats shut in the cottage, Annabel on the lawn and a bowl of bread in her house for bait, shot them. Not before we'd noticed something interesting, however. On the whole the rats made Annabel nervous. She stamped her feet at them; kicked when she was eating and they rustled in the straw; looked worried from time to time at their entrance holes in the corners. Not, however, when it came to a certain light-brown rat. A rat whom we, too, recognised.

  He could come out of his hole with impunity. One night, when we went up to see Annabel at dusk, we discovered him actually feeding with her at her bowl. We watched amazed from the paddock as he stood up on his hind legs, leaned into her bowl and ate nose to nose with our donkey. We watched even more amazed when, as the level of bran went down, the rat got into the bowl, Annabel went on eating, and when he got in her way she just tossed him out with her nose. Even then, while we stood there pop-eyed with incredulity, the rat unperturbedly climbed back again.

  We didn't shoot him. He was a rat of character. If we kept the rest of them down, we decided, he could hardly propagate the valley on his own. So Charles despatched the rest. The fawn one was allowed to go free. In order not to encourage a further invasion we fed Annabel, as it was now full Spring, in the open field where rats hesitate to go...

  Meanwhile Annabel had a further adventure. We were having lunch one day when the owner of Misha the Alsatian arrived with a distracted expression on her face and asked whether she could borrow Annabel for a while.

  She had, she explained, a two-year-old called Monarch, destined to become a racehorse. Her other horses had gone away to grass. Monarch, kept behind because he needed building up as thoroughbreds sometimes do, was pining for the others and refusing his food. She wondered if Annabel could help him eat.

  Annabel, we assured her, could help anybody eat. Probably only by getting the idea from watching her that if they didn't hurry up there'd be a famine. But they'd eat. She even made us feel ravenous at times. Which was why, that evening, the village saw another local procession. Our taking Annabel over to meet Monarch.

  Some of them, since Monarch lived quite near the centre of the village, saw the moment when they actually did meet when Monarch towered over his gate to sniff at her and Annabel, with one look at the tallest horse she had ever seen, put her tail between her legs and started determinedly for home.

  Still more of them witnessed the next scene. When we led Annabel into the field, she hid behind us, Monarch tried to get round us to look at her, and the lot of us – since as fast as we sidestepped evasively so did Annabel behind us and so did Monarch in front – did a veleta across the field.

  Roused, no doubt, by banging on one another's doors, a crowd that would have done credit to a town crier witnessed the scene when we ran to encourage Annabel, Monarch ran too to catch us up, and, encircled with animals like an Indian attack, we went flat out for our lives.

  Eventually we left them together, however. Eventually they touched noses and made friends. Magically, with Annabel feeding beside him and he looking proudly down at her, Monarch started to graze. She could sleep soundly tonight now, said Mrs Jennings, as we slipped off up the lane.

  Not perhaps so soundly as she hoped. Somebody passing our cottage later that evening reported Monarch and Annabel going round their paddock like the Valkyries. Somebody else, passing our way at closing time, reported Mrs Jennings and her husband going like Valkyries too. Trying to catch them, they said – for one of the conditions we'd made about lending Annabel was that she should be locked in for safety at night. They'd caught them. Led them in. Annabel first, reported the onlooker; Monarch refused to move a step till he'd seen Annabel put into a loose box ahead of him. Let them out the next morning, continued the report, when Annabel was seen heading through the vegetable garden as her personal short cut to the paddock and Monarch gallivanting after her.

  Gallivanting was the word. The whole of that day, apparently, he never stopped chasing Annabel. Whether – which was something we hadn't given thought to – it was because she was a girl. In which case, said Charles, her marriage to Henry was no doubt null and void but in the cour
se of time we could expect a donkey foal with legs like a racehorse. Whether, which was the Jennings' interpretation, she was just too small for Monarch... From the point of view of playing, explained Mrs. Jennings – with those little legs and that long coat and Monarch chasing her round like a puppy.

  But that night they brought her back again. Monarch was eating like a horse, they said, thanks to her. To keep up the good work they'd borrowed a companion for him more his own size and now he was chasing that one round the field...

  Never, in all the time we'd had her, had we seen a more thoughtful donkey than the one who walked into her house that night, looked appreciatively at her bed, and snorted with contentment as we put her hurdle up. East, West, Home Was Best, said Annabel as she lay down in the straw. She didn't like racehorses, she said as we crept quietly away with the cats.

  Postscript

  So there, for the moment, we are. The one thing we have learned from our year of donkey keeping is that donkeys don't eat nettles. Not straight from the field, anyway. Only when they are cut down and wilted so the sting doesn't hurt their mouths, said an expert who told us about it one day. And wasn't that reasonable, when one came to consider it?

  Perfectly. Except that Annabel – put at last among the fruit trees, with the bracken removed, cages round the apples (better, we thought, than a cage around Annabel), the nettles cut and wilted and nothing to do but pick them up – didn't eat the nettles. She ate all the raspberry canes. Prickles and all, announced Charles, arriving starkly with the news that she'd mown them all to the ground. And then we moved her to another patch of ground and she ate our cultivated hollies. Prickles and all too, until all that remained of months of cherishing by Charles were two little main-stems with the labels fluttering like distress signals from their tops. Got mixed up with the Dandelions, was Annabel's explanation.

  That is why, when she is out of her paddock now, she usually has Charles in attendance. Keeping an eye on her while he works to prevent further misunderstandings about dandelions. Unless, of course, she is on the lawn under my jurisdiction. Chasing Solomon and Sheba, who play Donkeys and Indians with her willingly for the perturbation of passers-by. Greeting the tradesmen, who grow nimbler day by day at nipping backwards through the gate with Annabel's nose in their baskets. Clattering into the kitchen for refreshment, which has led to a further discovery. That Annabel likes liquor.

  She likes, at any rate, the top off fermenting barley wine. Nectar, commented Annabel when I experimentally offered her the skimmings. Nourishing, she announced, practically knocking the table over in her anxiety to have some more. It took two of us to get her back to the paddock that night, and she ate my tape-measure as she went.

  We have very peculiar cats. We now have a peculiar donkey.

  Any bets, asks Charles, that come October we have another peculiar member of the household? About two feet high with a liking for barley wine? With ears and a voice like Annabel?

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