I ought to explain why it was that the police thought I might take a dying donkey onto my farm, an unusual thing for a city boy like me, who, for most of my life, thought that donkeys lived only in India or Spain.
I asked the animal control officer how many people they had asked to consider taking Simon, wondering how I had come to her attention and that of the New York State Police. “Just you,” she said.
“Oh,” I said in one of those mind-altering moments when you get a glimpse of how others might see you.
“We knew you had some donkeys and loved them,” she said. “I read your books.”
I’m an author and photographer who owns a farm in upstate New York. I live there with my wife, Maria, and numerous animals. My life has never proceeded in straight lines; zigs and zags are more my style. If my life on a farm is characterized by any one idea, it would be this: one thing leads to another.
And it was Carol that led, in zigs and zags, to Simon.
I believe the first donkey I ever laid eyes on was wearing a straw hat and hee-hawing at Elmer Fudd in a Saturday morning cartoon. I remember the donkey had enormous teeth and was rather loud and goofy.
I never saw a real donkey until I was nearly fifty years old. I had taken my border collie out to a sheep farm in Pennsylvania to learn how to herd sheep. The experience transformed me in many ways. I decided to buy my own farm, I began writing about dogs, and I encountered a donkey who was to alter the nature of my life.
Carol was nearly twenty years old when I met her. She was living in a small corral. Like many donkeys, Carol seemed an afterthought, a misfit. Donkeys come to farms for all kinds of reasons. Somebody might trade a donkey for an old horse or for some hay. A farmer might come across one and take pity on it, or suspect it might be useful down the road.
Sometimes donkeys luck out and end up on rich horse farms, keeping horses company, getting to eat the good hay and grain, and are even quartered indoors in heated stalls. But that is not the fate of most donkeys. Donkeys have lived with humans as long as or longer than dogs have, but donkeys haven’t figured out how to worm their way into human hearts quite so well. Their history and general treatment do not speak well of the generosity and mercy of human beings.
The farmer couldn’t even quite remember how Carol had ended up with him but she had been in that corral every day for the sixteen years that he had owned her. Once in a while he tossed some hay over the fence and filled up the rusty bathtub with fresh water, but mostly, Carol survived off of brush and bark, pooled rain water, and water from a small muddy stream that ran through her corral. Twice a year, a farrier came to trim her hooves.
The farmer was busy, and he conceded that most of the time, he forgot about Carol. Farm animals are not pets; they are pretty hardy. Donkeys are especially hardy, and can go far on very little.
The thought of Carol alone for years in that tiny patch of woods haunted me, offering some of the first stirrings of an emotional notion of compassion, but even then, my response to her was to bring some apples whenever I visited the farm; it didn’t go much deeper than that. I was distracted, busy, I had a kid, other worries; the life of a donkey seemed very remote to me.
Carol was not good-natured or accepting, and she did not wish to have her hooves trimmed. After a while, the battered farrier just gave her a drugged apple before going to work. She still managed to bite and kick him at least once every time. The farmer told me this by way of cautioning me to be careful around her. “She has sweet eyes,” he said, “but she is not sweet.” Maybe, I thought, that was why he had left her alone in that corral all these years.
Carol’s corral was right next to the big pasture where I was learning to herd sheep with my dog, and I would see her staring at me. It unnerved me. She seemed to be trying to tell me something, but since I had never come near a real donkey in my life, I had no idea what it was she might be saying.
I felt bad for her, in the way middle-class people who grew up in cities feel bad for animals who live their natural lives out in the real world. We just can’t help but project feelings into their heads. I just assumed she was hungry, and she seemed quite lonely all by herself in that corral, staring at me.
The first time I brought her apples, I walked over to the corral, my pockets stuffed with some big, red, juicy ones. Carol leaned over the fence, grabbed the first apple—and nearly my thumb with it—and crunched it judiciously and hungrily. My dog was standing back, staring at Carol, trying to keep an eye on the sheep who were grazing nearby.
I reached for another apple, but Carol was not willing to be patient. She walked right through the fence, dragging wire and fence posts behind her, put her ears down, and charged my terrified dog, who took off toward the other side of the pasture. The sheep needed no invitation to leave, and they took off in the other direction. Carol then turned to me, ripped the apple out of my pocket, and began nosing my other pockets for more.
“Hey, hey,” I said, not sure what commands to give a donkey. I was shocked to realize she could have walked through the fence any day of those sixteen years she had spent there had she chosen to. It was my first real demonstration of donkey thinking. The first rule of the donkey ethos: everything is their idea.
It took a while for the irritated farmer to get Carol back inside—a loaf of bread did it—and he warned me in no uncertain terms to leave her alone.
I couldn’t do that, of course. Every time I came herding, I brought apples and carrots. I would climb into her corral with the treats so she would have no reason to bust out.
There are some people who are deeply drawn into the rescue of animals. I am not one. I think in some ways animal rescue is too intense for me, too difficult. Perhaps that’s one reason I love happy, healthy, well-bred working dogs. I love to do things with them; I love the way they enter my life easily and come along with me.
But I fell in love with Carol, this grumpy, independent creature. I worried about her. I wanted to help her. It did something for me—something selfish—to treat her well. It fed something inside of me.
In her own way, she was quite affectionate with me. She loved it when I rubbed the inside of her ears or tickled the sides of her nose. She would not let me brush her, and if I didn’t have an apple, she would lower her head and butt me in the side or rear end. Carol made no pretense about our relationship—she wanted the apples, and if she felt like it, she might allow me to show her some affection. Or not. Donkeys cannot be bought or bribed, only appeased.
And Carol … well, she was not very nice. She wouldn’t have fit into one of those cute donkey tales in cartoons and movies. Sometimes you had to like the idea of her more than Carol herself. This was perhaps the first inkling I had about the vagaries of compassion—we tend to feel it for people and animals we like; it is hard to feel it for people and animals we don’t like.
Whenever I was out herding, Carol would come over to the fence and hang her head on the outside, her ears turning like radar scanners, eyeing me soulfully with her big brown eyes. Somehow, it seemed as if I were her human, and she was my donkey, even though my home at the time was in suburban New Jersey, where donkeys played no part in the life of anyone.
A year or so after I met Carol, I bought a farm in upstate New York—I called it Bedlam Farm—and I bought some of the sheep I had been working with. The farmer hired somebody with a trailer to drive them up to me. If I had never met a donkey before Carol, I also had never set foot on a farm before in my life—I was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and had lived in New York City, Dallas, Boston, Washington, and Baltimore before moving to New Jersey. The farm would, in my mind, become a laboratory for my newfound passion to write about dogs, animals, and rural life. Bedlam Farm consisted of ninety acres, a Civil War–era farmhouse, four barns, and large areas of fenced-in pasture. It was a good place for sheep and a paradise for donkeys, although I had no plans to acquire any. I had heard from farmers that donkeys were wonderful guard animals, and would keep coyotes and predators away from sheep. But I had my hands full just trying to survive on my new farm. When the trailer of sheep arrived, the driver backed it into the pasture and opened the gates.
The first creature out was Carol, who looked around disdainfully, snorted, kicked one of the sheep away from her, and put her nose in my pocket. The driver handed me a note from the farmer, which read, “Here is Carol. You love her so much, you can feed her.”
So began my life with Carol. She was, from the first, the most imperious creature I had ever met, human or animal. In hot summers, she loved to hang out in the big shady barn. She could hardly believe her good fortune having acres of pasture to wander and all the grass and fresh water she might want.
Carol was an older donkey, and she had lived outdoors for years without shelter or good, nutritious food. I saw her limping, and had a large-animal vet come and check her out. Carol did not wish to be examined. She butted the vet into the wall, tried to bite him, and nearly kicked him through the window. We got a halter on her and cross-tied her to the sides of the barn. She had a laundry list of ailments, from foundering—a painful wasting disease of the hooves—to swollen joints and gums. She was, the vet said, in great pain, and he gave her some shots and handed me a bunch of long needles to stick in her butt later in the day. Then he left.
That night, when I went out to administer the medications, I got another major lesson in donkey thinking. They read intentions. When I came out to give Carol an apple, she was standing by the gate, meek as a kitten. If I came out with some needles or medicines in my pocket, she was off and running. That night it was –20°F, and a stubborn human and a stubborn donkey had an epic confrontation on my farm’s hilly pasture. Carol took off in a blinding storm, hobbling and stumbling up a hill, as my border collie Rose and I gave chase. I caught her an hour later on the top of the hill and stuck the needle in her butt while she dragged me all the way back down the hill. I got frostbite in three fingers that night. I learned that if you want to give a donkey a needle, get her in a small stall with a grain bucket, hide the needle out of sight, and then stick her when her mouth is full.
Despite all her ailments, she kept giving me donkey lessons.
One was the gate lesson. You can’t just have a normal gate with a donkey. I had a chain that hung on my gate and when you closed it, you wrapped the chain around the gatepost and it held fast. Carol loved to open gates and doors and windows; it was child’s play for her. It took me a while to figure it out, but she would watch me latch the gate, then she would lean over the fence and unwrap the chain, and the gate would swing open. Twice, I came home to find that the gate was open, and so was the back door of the farmhouse—the knob was fun for her to grab and twist. Carol would get into the kitchen, open the cabinets, and munch on bread and cereal. And it was not simple to get her out of the kitchen, either, no matter how loudly I would stomp my feet and yell.
The only thing that drove her out was when I banged some pans together, startling her. Donkeys do not like loud sounds. Carol pretty much went where she pleased, until I spent some serious money on latches that could not be opened from the inside.
Still, Carol taught me much about love, or the very special ways in which donkeys love.
Carol’s hooves and health were stabilized for a while with vitamins, special grain, leg wraps, daily shots (administered bravely by me), painkillers, and the best hay. That winter, there was too much ice and snow for her to make it up to the hill, her favorite spot for avoiding me, so we really got to know each other.
I had to go into the barn every night to give Carol all of her many medicines and wraps, and that took the better part of an hour. I worked out a deal with her. If I brought a bucket of grain or oats or something wonderful to eat, she would become surprisingly tolerant of my sticking needles into her and forcing pills down her big, smelly mouth. If I didn’t, the process was war from beginning to end.
It wasn’t that she was bribable—she was not—but as a donkey who had lived off of grass, the bark of trees, and old hay, she seemed to consider it a good deal to get her oats in exchange for some intrusive prodding and poking. I like to think she came to trust me, but I will also admit I bought a lot of good grain. Carol loved to eat, sniffing her food, picking it up in small amounts, chewing it deliberately, savoring each morsel. What was a needle in the face of that?
I made another surprising discovery. Carol loved music and, more than anything, she loved Willie Nelson. I like Willie Nelson, too, and I discovered this shared passion when I brought a boom box into the barn with me to play while I was sorting through Carol’s large bucket of pills and treatments.
When I played “Georgia on My Mind,” Carol’s lip quivered—this is how donkeys show contentment—and her eyes closed and she just seemed calm and serene. I came to love those moments—the big barn creaking in the wind, the barn cats skittering around the hay bales, Willie Nelson’s gravelly but soothing voice echoing off the big old rafters in the roof. The music connected us somehow. It got to Carol, reached some unfathomable part of her.
I got some greatest hits albums—she especially loved “Good Hearted Woman,” “Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”
Those hours in the barn became special to both of us. She would listen to Willie Nelson, who would put her into a mellow and dreamy state, and I would chew my granola bar—I thought we should be eating oats together—and those sessions became sweet, calm, and healing for both of us.
Carol grew stronger and heartier, and I think she looked forward to our evenings as much as I did. Donkey bonding, I guess you’d call it. After a while, I began talking to her, and she seemed to be listening to me.
I came to admire Carol for her integrity, her independence, and, eventually, the affection she would show me, leaning against me, letting me brush and stroke her forehead. Carol started to matter to me. She wasn’t just an animal I was taking care of; we had connected in a deep way—a way I had not experienced before. It was different from what I’d had with dogs or other pets. It felt like something old, almost mystical.
A few months after Carol came to my farm, I got a telephone call from a woman who said she had driven by the farm and observed Carol. She wanted to tell me, she said, that Carol was troubled. That she did not know she was a donkey; she was not in touch with her “donkeyness.” This was a bit of a shock to me. It was not something I had thought much about, yet it did click. Carol had spent most of her life alone in that farm corral in Pennsylvania. She may not have ever seen another donkey.
Who, I asked the woman, might you be?
“I am a Jewish donkey spiritualist,” said the woman, introducing her self as Pat Freund. She bred and raised donkeys on her farm nearby and she suggested that I come and see them, and perhaps take one home to keep Carol company. They were herd animals, she said. They needed to be with other donkeys.
Pat came to the farm, and she was everything she said she was. She and Carol touched heads and communicated with each other. I visited Pat’s farm and went into her barn, which was filled with beautiful donkeys of all ages, gliding around me.
A few days later, Fanny arrived, and Carol flipped out, going into the barn for a week and refusing to come out, although she still ate her bucket of grain and listened to Willie Nelson at night with me.
She was clearly rattled. When she did come out, she was different.
She had, in fact, come to terms with her “donkeyness.” You could see it. She and Fanny were inseparable from that moment, always within a few feet of each other. Carol now knew who she was. She was a donkey.
Although Fanny didn’t seem to get Willie Nelson, she was happy to join our evenings, eating some grain alongside Carol while I tended to the old donkey’s wounds and cranked up “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”
A few months after Fanny arrived, Pat Freund called to tell me that Fanny’s sister was for sale, and Lulu came to the farm. My donkeys became a happy threesome.
That winter, I saw Lulu and Fanny standing alone by the big barn. They looked agitated, and I looked around for Carol. I found her up in the pole barn. She seemed dazed, walking in circles and bumping her head on the barn’s wooden sides. The vet came and said she had had a stroke. Carol legs had been weakening lately and now it was hard for her to stand.
For most animal lovers, especially people with pets, compassion means keeping animals alive, going into debt sometimes, taking every step, making every commitment to extend life. This is, to many, the very definition of love.
I turned to the large-animal vet when he examined Carol, and I asked what would be the most compassionate thing to do. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Oh,” he said, “that is pretty simple. We should put her down.”
Simple? Nothing about compassion is simple in our world, especially the idea that ending a life can be more merciful than prolonging it. But I agreed. I didn’t need any further discussion.
I was glad to have given Carol a few great years. She loved her life on the farm, especially the green grass in the summer and fresh hay in the winter. As her body lay by the pasture gate, Lulu and Fanny came over to sniff her, and I played Willie on the boom box singing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”
It was raining that day, and I did a good bit of crying in the rain myself. But my life with donkeys was under way.