Not Your USUAL Leisure Sunday Night

There's nothing nicer on a Sunday evening than to get home from an afternoon of repairing fences to settle down for a quiet evening of general nothingness only to get a phone call from a neighbor asking if you're missing a donkey...


My neighbor lives about a quarter mile down the road. There's a pasture then a wooded area between us. Apparently, Dinky (that's the donkey that's out of favor at the moment) had gotten out of the lot we've had him in for the last four months and--smelling fresh grass along the way--decided to go exploring.


Leslie goes out to one of the trucks and grabs two spotlights. I throw on my gumboots (who knows what I'll have to walk through to get him home) , go to the old van we store feed in and grab a coffee can of range cubes.


We drive down to the neighbor's and shine the lights around her house. Thankfully, she knows we're on our way to look for the vagabond so she's not likely to come out shooting. We don't see him so we continue on down the road. We drive down a ways, don't see any sign of him so turn around and go back to the neighbor's. She comes out and tells us that her granddaughter drove up and saw him in the yard. She gets out of the truck and the donkey starts running towards her..that scares her back into her car. Actually, Dinky just loves being CLOSE. He's one of those that when you're walking, he's right behind you almost making you hurry. And there's no such thing as a sedate walk for him.


They have about a mile or so of pine trees behind their house. She says that he headed that way so we drive through the trees along this beautifully kept path, all the while calling him. We're driving along and have managed to travel quite a ways when finally I say, "Leslie, I don't think he'd come this far."



"Oh, I don't know.." he says just as we get to a place where there's a little creek. It's either drive over it or turn around. We decide on the latter. As Leslie turns his head to try and see a way to turn around, Dinky sticks his head in the window.:-)


Now for the fun part..how to get him home? He's not trained to lead. It's almost a mile to the house. It'd take too long to walk him back plus we'd probably lose his interest long before we made it that far. We get this bright idea that I'll sit on the tailgate with the range cubes and get him to follow us. Will that work? You betcha! Better than I liked!



I sit on the tailgate, call him over from where he's gotten interested in some grass and he eats a range cube out of my hand. Leslie takes off just as he's reaching for another one. He starts following us...Leslie speeds up. Dinky speeds up. Leslie speeds up. Dinky speeds up. Finally, I'm holding out a range cube and Dinky is in full gallop. His face is just inches from mine as we're speeding down that path. I actually feel his front legs hitting mine a time or two as he's running. We come out with the house in view, pass it along the driveway, and when we get to the road I'm yelling at Leslie," Speed up or he's going to jump up in here with me!"


Leslie takes the road from the driveway at full speed and off down the road we go with Dinky in hot pursuit of that range cube. We get a little way down the road and we lose the advantage of the nightlight that's in her yard by the road. It's getting darker and hard to see due to the trees on the side of the road. I can't see Dinky..he must have slowed down and gotten sidetracked. I turn my head and holler at Leslie," Slow down, I think we've lost him!" only to turn my head back around and immediately start yelling," Go! Go! Go! Go!" He's caught up with us and is about to take my fingers off , all the while galloping at full speed behind the speeding truck. It happened to cross my mind..What if Leslie-for some unfathomable reason--suddenly decided to stop? The horrific picture that brought to mind wasn't fit to ponder...I'd scare myself to death if I did.


We get to our driveway, Leslie turns in and Dinky keeps going straight! Well, only for a bit. He slows and decides to investigate the ditch on the other side...


I get off the tailgate, get him re-interested in the range cubes and he's again running along behind and then to the side of the truck--only to break away and head for the incline beside the driveway to the green grass that's cropped up out there the last week or so. It's the devil's own job to get him from there to inside the gate, but once we've convinced him it's for his own good (use your imagination, here) he's brought inside, albeit unwillingly, and placed inside a corral made of corral panels. And there he'll stay until I can find where he escaped through the fence. But that'll have to wait until tomorrow...for now, I'm just going to enjoy the rest of my Sunday night, and hope I don't get any more phone calls....