My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  The next day, I went to the barn and found my rabbit cage had been ripped open and an angora killed. I buried the remains in the base of the fire pit, then spent the afternoon putting together new cages and hanging them high on the side of the chicken house to protect the other rabbits.

  “Unless coyotes can fly, you’ll be safe here,” I told the angoras, but in the morning I discovered the side of my new metal cages had been peeled back like a banana. Another rabbit lay dead on the ground.

  “I don’t see how a coyote can do this,” I said.

  “I’ll ask Ronnie to look at the carnage. He’ll know what we’re dealing with,” Mark said.

  Ronnie came out later and shook his head. “That’s a bear for sure,” he said. “They don’t usually attack rabbits, but they’d tear open the cage for the food, and if a bunny is easy pickin’s, he might just get scooped up, too. I’d be happy to camp out here and shoot a bear for ya, but it’s not bear season, so you can’t tell nobody if I clip one.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  I still had two other angoras to worry about, so I repaired the cage and wound extra wire around the joints. Mark had bought me three young peacocks a week prior, a gift of good faith to convince me things were going to be fine. I heightened the security of their pen, but extra wire didn’t protect the poor things when an unexpected cold snap rolled in later that week. One bitterly cold morning, I found them huddled together, dead from exposure.

  Mark said, “These things happen.”

  “After all I’ve read about raising poultry, I should have known better. I should have set up a warming bulb in a nesting box or something.”

  My little peacocks joined Early and the others in the fire pit, my designated cremation center now.

  “Let’s go to the flea market,” Mark said as he and Ronnie piled into his pickup the next Saturday.

  While the boys were looking over used tools, I wandered to the livestock area, my eyes caught by what appeared to be a bag of peacock feathers. A closer look showed that they were attached to a fully-grown peacock trussed up in a sling like a broken arm.

  “You like peacocks?” the woman selling the birds asked.

  “Oh, yes. Lost one I loved dearly just recently.” I didn’t mention the other young birds I’d lost through stupidity.

  She gestured to the back of her truck. “These two gotta go to someone who will really appreciate them,” she said with a wink. “They’re beauties, and for some reason I like you so I’ll make you a special deal. A hundred dollars for the pair.”

  The last thing I needed was to spend money on birds, but buying them somehow established my faith in a Georgia future in some way, so I turned over my small stash of mad money and within minutes the birds were inside our truck wedged under the back seats.

  Once home, I cut the binding off their bodies and let the peacocks run free in my big chicken run. I named them Prism and Palate and kept them in the pen for a full six weeks so they wouldn’t run off.

  Each morning I stared in awe as the male displayed his tail in colorful splendor, the symbol of elegance I sorely needed in my mud-filled world. I imagined baby peacocks following in their wake, and in time, a barnyard filled with graceful birds in a home saved by our trust in the universe. But the first time I opened the pen, the male peacock flew up over the trees and without so much as a backward glance over his shoulder, left forevermore. I had, with good intention, tried to create a world of colorful, dramatic poultry, but in the end all I had to show for my trust was one gray, unremarkable bird. The peacocks were a living metaphor of our entire country adventure. Colorful dreams. Drab reality.

  For weeks, the bear continued to return on a reliable seven-day schedule, tearing apart rabbit cages and defecating on the ground around the chicken house no matter what I did to thwart further destruction. One morning, I spied the backside of a bear going into the woods. I chased the beast, with no idea what I might do had I come face to face with a testy bear. I just felt compelled to face down anything and everything that was killing off the things I loved. I hiked several yards into the thicket, but there was no sign of him, so I returned to the barn to inspect the damage.

  The peacock was lazily taking a dust bath in the sun and my rabbits were nestled in their wooden privacy boxes. When I went to feed the bigger animals, Dalai was missing. I assumed my llama was just hiding in the trees to escape the heat. When Dalai didn’t show up for a second feeding, I turned to Ronnie for a dash of country advice.

  “Now, I’m not claiming to know everything, ‘cause I only have ‘bout a sixth grade education, but it seems to me a bear wouldn’t be a threat to a llama ‘cause bears really don’t eat meat. Dalai probably just escaped. Have you checked with the neighbors?”

  I asked around, but no one had seen a loose llama. I walked the perimeter of the fence in case he was hiding in the trees, but Dalai wasn’t inside. No llama. No llama remains either. I spent two days searching, then put posters around town and an ad in the paper offering a reward for my lost llama. People hinted that the animal might have been stolen. Llamas are territorial, so even if he did slip out of the pasture, he’d stick nearby unless foul play was at hand. Everyone I saw driving down the road with a livestock trailer became suspect. The very thought that someone might steal my beloved llama made me crazy.

  Two weeks later, Mark noticed a horrible smell. He followed his nose to discover Dalai’s remains in the overgrown weeds near the creek. Losing a chicken or a rabbit is one thing, but losing a llama is quite another. I cried all afternoon, unable to get the vision of my mangled pet out of my mind. Then I called the Georgia game warden and made arrangements for him to come out to give me advice.

  I said, “Joe, look at this poop. What do you think?”

  Joe spat. Joe had to spit every third sentence due to the chew in his mouth. He inspected the damaged cages, kicked at the pile of poop left by the renegade attacker and made an assessment.

  “You have a bear. He seems to be appearing every seven days or so, which means he is making regular rounds.” (Spit.)

  “How long will he keep coming?”

  “As long as he finds good things to eat. You need to stop leaving food in your rabbit cages. Your bear thinks this a grocery stop now. I can set a trap, but traps are dangerous for dogs and kids, often more trouble than the bear.” (Spit.) “Bear season is around the corner. You can always just shoot the bear then, if ’n you want.”

  As mad as I was at the animal, I couldn’t imagine killing something as majestic as a bear. “What if I feed the bear? If I leave a bucket of food he likes, perhaps he won’t bother my animals.”

  Joe just about choked on his tobacco. “Feeding a wild bear is a really bad idea.”

  I led him to the remains of my beloved llama. “Do you think the bear did this, too?”

  He narrowed his eyes and spat, inspecting Dalai’s remains. “Looks to me like this animal was taken down by coyotes. You can tell because they gnaw at the flanks but leave the rest for other creatures to polish off. They do this with deer, too.”

  “Llamas are supposed to be guard animals. I thought they chased coyotes away.”

  “One llama can’t fight off an entire pack.”

  “Can a donkey?”

  “They’re better at keeping predators away, but even so...” (Spit.) My arms broke out in goose bumps as I imagined my donkey being the next prey. “How do I get rid of coyotes?”

  “They’re not indigenous to the area so there’s no law against killing ‘em. But, even if you’re a crack shot, you won’t get rid of them ‘cause coyotes repopulate faster than you can reload a gun.”

  Gritting my teeth, I described the thirteen headless chickens I found previously and asked if I should assign blame to the coyotes or the bear.

  “Probably a possum, weasel, fox, or something else.”

  “So, what you’re tellin
g me is nature is going to keep coming at me over and over again, despite my best efforts to thwart her.”

  “’Fraid so.” (Spit.) “Don’t feel too bad. You know what they say; anyone raising livestock is raising dead stock.” He chuckled at his joke and got into his truck.

  After he left, I stood staring at my barnyard, mad enough to spit, myself.

  We may have had one foot firmly planted in the country now, but the other shoe still hadn’t dropped. Where do we belong? I kept wondering. For all that I was frustrated with the country, I couldn’t imagine our returning to the rat race either. My farm experiments and reading had turned me into a passionate environmentalist with a serious commitment to lower my carbon footprint. If we lived in some metropolis, we could do without a car and walk or take public transportation to work or the grocery store, a choice that is more earth-friendly than growing your own chicken eggs ever could be. Cities have a decent library and all the other intellectual pursuits I missed too, but is a culture fix worth living where noise and pollution assail the senses and people have long since forgotten to pause to say

  “how do?” to a neighbor? Could I ever again live where houses were so crowded together you could hear neighbors’ conversations from your back porch? Could I return to a life without a donkey? Then again, if everything I ever cared about and loved was dying in the country, would I even have a choice?

  “Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  LLAMA TRAUMA

  The possibility of the coyotes returning to pick off my pregnant llama haunted my thoughts. Pulani might be safe enough in the pasture now that Donkey was close by, but her soon-to-be born fragile baby would make a perfect appetizer for hungry predators. Unless I wanted to spend my nights standing guard like a sentry, I had to put her in the barn, at least until she gave birth.

  For all that Dalai had been a dear and lovely creature, his female companion, Pulani, was a very evasive, impersonal bitch. Pulani spit great wads of slimy grain at Donkey. Every time I picked projectile goo from my darling donkey’s face, I vowed I’d sell that nasty llama someday. I just hadn’t gotten around to doing so because she was Dalai’s only company, and now that he was gone I was enamored with the idea of watching a baby llama come into the world.

  In all fairness, I hadn’t bothered with the female llama for a full year, so I was guilty of indulging her bad habits and perpetuating them. Ignoring an animal won’t make her any less ornery, just harder to catch...which happened to be my current challenge.

  Kent and I had a system for llama entrapment that involved holding a long rope between us. We would maneuver the animal into a corner and in trying to escape, she would run into the rope. We would hightail it to opposite sides to wrap the rope around the animal’s neck. The force usually caused burns on our sweating palms, but lassoing served up a great cowboy high as we moved in to get a halter on. A llama will follow your lead, docile as a lamb, once the halter is on.

  For an hour and a half, Kent and I chased Pulani. We had the rope around her neck a few times, but she went wild, flinging her head in circles, ducking and escaping with Houdini-like efficiency. Exhausted and frustrated, we eventually admitted that we needed a third party to chase this llama into the rope.

  “I’ll call Dad and ask him to come home early to help,” I said. “Let’s just try one more time,” Kent said.

  So, we quietly stepped into the woods again, a few feet away from the llama. “I’ll sneak up from the back,” he said, “You distract her here.” But before we could implement our diabolical plan, Kent started screaming. He ran out into the open pasture, flapping his arms and dancing about.

  Now, my son has a propensity for physical humor, so at first I thought he was just being his crazy self, trying to make me laugh. But then, I realized he was under attack from an underground wasp nest he’d stepped on.

  I charged after him, brushing off the violent insects, all the while cursing the llama rather than the wasps. My son was stung 15 times, on the face, legs, and arms. Pulani watched from the woods, smug as always.

  I took Kent to the house to attend to his stings.

  “I’m so sorry,” I kept saying, feeling guilty that my kids had to deal with things like wasps and mean llamas in this stupid life we had thrust them into.

  He shrugged. “These kinds of things are bound to happen once in a while. It’s OK.”

  When Mark came home we went out to catch the llama again. We chased her for another hour, all humor from the situation long since replaced with resentful complaining. No luck. Eventually a car came sputtering down the road with our neighbor’s kid at the wheel.

  “Hey, want to help us catch this llama?” I asked.

  How many sixteen-year-olds do you know who would say no to a question like that? None, in the country, I assure you. We now had two more hands joining in the pursuit. Nevertheless, with three hundred pounds of bad disposition fueling her, Pulani proved impossible to catch as she continued pulling the rope out of the hands of whoever was holding it.

  “Maybe you should just leave her out here for the coyote’s next meal.” Kent said.

  Giving up was tempting, but I was determined to save the baby, if not her. “Give me that rope. I’m getting her. This time I WON’T LET GO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!”

  Mark handed me the rope. “Go for it, cowgirl.”

  The next time I caught Pulani, I didn’t let go. Unfortunately, this meant she dragged me about 15 feet over rocks and weeds like I was a stuntman in a western movie. When I stood, the skin was scraped off of the entire right side of my body. I had a bruise the size of an open hand on my right hip and my knuckles were bleeding. There was a scrape on my chin and another under my eye. Worst of all, I had dropped the rope in the end, so the llama was still at large.

  The boys laughed nervously. Who could blame them? Here I was, a middle-aged woman cussing at llamas, letting myself get dragged in the dirt to prove I was master of the beast after bragging about how I wouldn’t let go. Boy, didn’t I show everybody how tough I was?

  I sat in the dirt, dabbed at the blood and said, “Well, I didn’t let go.”

  “And we admire you for that,” Mark said.

  “Stop smiling.” I marched after the llama with bloodthirsty determination, ready to punch her lights out, a la Blazing Saddles.

  By now, a horrible growl-like gurgling was coming out of the llama’s throat. She stood her ground as we closed in, too tired to run one more time. This made possible our winding the rope around her neck to put the halter on, all the while dodging spit and a few lackluster kicks.

  “Your days are numbered,” I snapped, yanking on the lead rope as I led her to the barn. But once inside the stall, she behaved sweet as pie, peering over the gate and begging for food. Fool that I am, I gave a treat to her.

  Each day thereafter, I went down to the barn to visit my nasty llama, hoping to desensitize her with handling to avoid ever having to go through such an ordeal again. My scars were healing, but the distrust on both of our parts was still raw.

  Our interaction typically went something like this:

  I’d enter the stall. We’d stare at each other. She’d pin her ears back. I’d squint like Clint Eastwood and say, “Go ahead, make my day.”

  She would then lift her head as high as she could, her nose straight up in the air to establish her superiority. I’d hold my eyes downcast in hopes of alleviating her aggression even though I felt in no way contrite.

  I’d slowly walk around the stall. She’d side step away. I’d corner her and pat her back, feeling her skin nervously shake under my fingers. When I could, I let my hand slide down to her belly, hoping to feel the baby, but this always made her kick so I’d pull away. Pulani’s due date came and went. She didn’t even look all that pregnant. Was it possible to keep two llamas together fo
r a year and not have the female end up pregnant? I recruited the vet for a house call, and he confirmed that she was indeed pregnant, but she had another two months to go. Since catching her was almost impossible, Pulani would have to stay in the barn for some time.

  The vet gave me some nasty paste to squirt into her mouth to help her produce milk when the time came, but left me no clue how to actually accomplish that. I decided to hook a lead to her halter and tie her head up against the wood fence so I could force the applicator between her pressed lips. One more lovely bonding experience for me and my barbaric pet...

  The poor animal grew bored, hormonal, and lonely locked up in the barn so long. Each day, we did our love-hate dance. I forced the medicine in her mouth, then followed the unwanted cream with a carrot treat. Eventually, she acted glad to see me, moaning whenever I showed up and following me with her eyes as I did my barn chores. She still wouldn’t take a cookie out of my hand, but I’d drop a treat into her bin or hold her grain in a scoop over the fence and she would take the first few bites despite how close I was.

  One day, she tentatively took a piece of carrot from my fingers. Within a week, she was leaning her head over the fence begging for cookies or carrots every time she saw me. In time, she started sticking her nose into my empty hands too, as if I were a magician who could make cookies appear with a mere flick of my fingers. Over time, we had come to terms with each other and developed an odd relationship built on respect, curiosity, and cookies.