The sound of chirping woke her bright and early the next morning. The noise grew louder as the birds screeched at each other. Hayley staggered to the window and stared out, expecting to see thousands crammed into the small bush outside, but counted roughly fifteen. Nature was nice, she thought as she pulled the window shut firmly, but not this early in the morning. She climbed back into bed and dozed off.
Later, as she yawned and stretched in bed, a loud revving sound caught her attention, mid-stretch. At the sound of a groan and crunch of gears, she threw back the bedcovers and hurried from her room. As she made her way to the front of the house, kicking her toe on the corner of the chair as she went, she heard a bang, followed by raised voices, mixed with an unfamiliar animal noise that set Hayley’s nerves on edge. What the hell was that racket? She’d just reached the front door and stepped outside when the truck revved loudly once more and took off down the driveway in a cloud of dust.
‘What the heck?’ Hayley muttered, unable to catch much more than a glimpse of an old red truck. She was about to head back inside when a God-awful noise started up nearby. The braying, wheezy cry increased in decibels as she ran down the two steps and along the front path towards the side fence, almost skidding to a halt when she came face to face with a brown and white donkey with a grey snout, making the loudest racket Hayley had ever heard in her life.
‘Hey,’ she said, unsure how to proceed. What on earth was a donkey doing tied to her fence? She glanced back down the driveway, even though she knew the truck was gone. For the briefest of moments she wondered if the donkey had somehow fallen off the back, until she rationalised it would hardly have tied itself to the fence.
‘Okay, I know you’re upset, but you need to knock off that noise,’ she told the donkey, striving for a firm tone. The animal stopped briefly, but then quickly started again.
This was ridiculous. Maybe if she fed it the donkey would shut up, she thought, turning away to run back inside and find something suitable. The noise got even louder. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she yelled over her shoulder, then shook her head. As if it understood a word she was saying.
What the hell does a donkey even eat? She grabbed her phone and googled the question. Hay. Well, that wasn’t helpful, she didn’t have any hay in the fridge. Carrots and apples. ‘Jackpot!’ she said, grabbing a carrot before running into her bedroom and changing out of her pyjamas.
She raced back outside, following the racket.
‘Okay, calm down. Here,’ she said, walking cautiously towards the animal, the carrot held out in front of her as a peace offering. The noise stopped as the donkey sniffed at the carrot before mouthing at it timidly. ‘That’s better, isn’t it,’ she said, relieved. ‘There’s a good…donkey.’ She realised she had no idea if it was a boy or a girl. Now that the immediate hysteria had eased, Hayley began to make sense of the situation. It was too much of a coincidence that she’d called about the free donkey last night and this morning it had somehow miraculously turned up outside her house, but why the hell would someone dump a large animal like this and leave without even talking to her? She’d said she was thinking about it, she hadn’t agreed to take it.
What was she going to do with a donkey? Gingerly she reached out and touched the fur on its face, encouraged when it didn’t try to bite her hand. With a little more confidence she scratched between its ears and it leaned its head into her touch. ‘Wow, those are some big ears,’ she said quietly as she continued scratching. ‘What are we going to do with you?’ She looked back over her shoulder a little desperately. There was no help there; whoever had owned it before was long gone. There was the old shearing shed out the back that had the stalls, she supposed that would be the logical place to put it for now. She couldn’t just leave it tied to the fence.
Moving slowly, she untied the rope and, whispering a silent plea for the animal to cooperate, led it around the back of the yard, dangling the rest of the carrot in front of its nose.
As they neared the shed the animal became a little more wary and slower to move. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, hoping she sounded encouraging. She let the donkey take a bite of the carrot before urging it forward inside the nearest of the old gated stalls, dragging the rickety old gate closed.
‘What am I supposed to do now?’ she asked, leaning over the gate as it finished eating the carrot. Almost as though answering, the animal began baying once more. Food. In order to shut it up, she was going to need to feed it something more satisfying than a carrot. She needed hay.
When she walked into Lochway rural supplies a combined smell of animal feed, fertiliser and who knew what else hit her. A stocky man wearing dirty jeans and a polo shirt strode into the dim interior, followed by another man wearing a saggy, faded hat and muddy work boots. Both men glanced at her but didn’t stop their conversation.
Hayley waited patiently as they discussed the weather and the stocky man dug a pair of glasses from his pocket, perching them on the end of his nose as he searched the computer at the front desk for something.
Hayley couldn’t say she’d ever been inside a feed store before; there wasn’t anything overly interesting, unless you were a farmer, she guessed. There were lots of pipes and parts, a whole wall of fittings for things she couldn’t identify. There were bottles of insecticides, treatments for worms, fleas, ticks and buffalo fly, whatever that was. There were big bins of seeds and bags of feed for what looked like every kind of animal under the sun.
‘Can I help you?’
Hayley turned and found the man from the counter standing nearby.
‘I’m after some hay.’
‘What kind of hay?’
Hayley stared at him blankly. How many kinds of hay could there be? ‘Ah, I don’t know…what have you got?’
‘Lucerne, oaten, grassy, barley.’
‘Umm, what would you recommend for a donkey?’
‘Grassy,’ he answered.
‘Then I’ll get some grassy hay, please.’
He turned and headed back to the desk, typing in something, before telling her the price.
‘I only wanted one,’ she said slowly.
‘That is the price for one,’ he said.
‘Oh. Okay. That’s fine.’ She handed over her card and waited for him to process the payment. Maybe it was going to be cheaper to feed the damn donkey on carrots and apples after all. Without a word, the man headed out of the store and Hayley hurried to follow him as he disappeared into the depths of a large shed attached to the store, reappearing with a bale of hay and heading towards her car.
He opened the boot, and before she could say anything he dropped in the bale and slammed the lid shut. Her lovely clean carpet in the back was not designed to carry hay. ‘Thank you,’ she said weakly as he turned and walked inside the store without a backward glance.
Hayley gave an irritated sigh as she stared at her car boot when she got home. It was going to take forever to clean. If the hay was baled up, how come so much of the damn stuff had fallen out? Grabbing hold of the blue twine, Hayley heaved and managed to lift the bale of hay up onto the edge of the boot, bracing herself to get it the rest of the way out.
She was going to need a better way of doing this next time, she thought as she struggled to take more than three steps at a time. She staggered into the shearing shed and dropped the bale to the ground, then sank onto it for a well-deserved rest, picking stray bits of scratchy hay from inside her bra. ‘You better appreciate this, donkey,’ she muttered, turning sideways to glare at it for added measure, only to jump to her feet in alarm. It was gone!
The long rickety gate she’d pulled across the front was now slightly ajar, and despite the evidence before her eyes, Hayley searched the rest of the shed hopefully, but there was no sign of her noisy, unexpected guest. A dark shadow darted across the floor in front of her and Hayley shrieked. ‘Bloody mice!’ she shuddered, hurrying back outside to continue looking. There was no sign of the donkey anywhere, but as she stood at the edge of the paddock, she heard a familiar noise. The heehaw wheezing was faint, but it was distinct.
Hayley followed the sound as best she could, realising that it was leading in the direction of the neighbouring property. She climbed through a fence and picked her way across the paddock. The grass wasn’t too long for the most part, but it was thick and still long enough to hide snakes. Boots, she thought, mentally putting them on her growing list of things she needed to buy sooner rather than later.
By the time she reached the final fence, she was breathing heavily. Exercise. Better add that to the list too. She hadn’t realised just how out of shape she’d gotten. Hermits were probably an unfit bunch in general. Well, now she had no excuse. Here she could get outside and still not have to see anyone.
There was a faint mechanical droning somewhere in the distance. It floated to her in the breeze that rustled the tops of the few tall trees scattered across the paddocks.
The braying had gotten louder so she knew she was on the right track, but she also knew that the stupid animal was no longer on her land. She gave an irritated sigh as she squeezed through the barbed wire fence and swore silently as her shirt was snagged. She had to reach back awkwardly to unhook herself. As she made her way through the paddock, she could see the source of her irritation braying from down in a gully…smack bang in the centre of a small dam.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, glaring at the animal from the edge of the water.
As soon as the donkey saw her, the braying increased. ‘All right, I heard you! The entire valley has probably heard you,’ she added as she eyed the water cautiously. It clearly wasn’t very deep, considering the animal was standing up, but the water was up to the tops of its legs, which would be thigh high on Hayley. Naturally the halter was just too far enough out of reach for her to be able to lean out and grab it. She really didn’t want to wade out into the dirty-looking water. She tried calling the donkey, patting her knees and forcing a cheerfulness she was far from feeling into her voice, but the hairy beast just bellowed more.
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ she said after a few minutes of unsuccessful coaxing. She was going to have to go in. She considered taking her sneakers off, but the thought of going in barefoot was not an option. Tiptoeing one foot in slowly, to test the water, Hayley soon discovered that the bottom of the dam was soft and extremely squishy. Carefully she took another step and let out a startled gasp as her foot slipped, barely managing to right herself. ‘Come on, get over here,’ she called, reluctant to go out further. She was having second thoughts about the entire rescue mission now she had discovered how muddy the bottom of the dam was; her feet were beginning to sink and she wasn’t at all confident that she was going to be able to get the stupid animal out on her own.
If she could just reach the halter, she might be able to tug it towards her; at the very least she’d have something solid to hold on to. She lifted one sodden foot with a great deal of effort and took another step, but halfway through the movement her shoe slipped and she lunged forward, sinking to her knees and slipping sideways into the dam. Cold water plastered her shirt to her skin and took the air from her lungs.
For a long moment Hayley could only stare at the animal as she dripped, until the uncomfortable sensation of being fully clothed, wet and smeared with stinky muddy water snapped her out of her surprise and she let out an outraged shriek. The donkey increased the volume of the heehawing, throwing in its opinion of the situation for good measure.
With a defeated sigh, Hayley closed her eyes, dropping her head forward briefly before throwing her shoulders back with renewed determination. ‘Right, you,’ she snapped as she surged forward and grabbed hold of the halter. ‘Come on.’ She pulled as hard as she could, but there was no budging the animal. ‘You cannot be that stuck,’ she muttered, sloshing her way closer, checking the position of the animal’s legs, but it wasn’t looking good. It was, in fact, very stuck. She wasn’t game to go out any further in case she sank as well.
‘Wouldn’t that just be my luck,’ she muttered. She could see the newspaper headlines now: MISSING AUTHOR’S REMAINS FOUND NEXT TO THE UNGRATEFUL ANIMAL SHE TRIED TO SAVE.
She was so busy trying to figure out what she was going to do that she didn’t immediately register the new sound until it was almost upon her. Hayley turned just as a white ute pulled to a stop and a man in a hat and sunglasses climbed out.
Just great, she thought, trying to ignore the clinging fabric and smell of mud, a witness to my inept attempt at donkey rescue. Not to mention what she must look like…Could today possibly get any worse?