Duncan Diary Installment 5 – September is Here!

September came early last year. The first week in August, to be exact. September is a donkey, dark brown, almost black, eleven months old, with a smile of enormous teeth, big brown eyes rimmed white and a very loud voice. According to his birth certificate he is half Irish, half Sicilian, a genetic mix I’ve never before encountered, and whose primary characteristics appear to be extreme beauty and even more extreme stubbornness. He weighs 100 pounds, but it took four energetic people almost three hours to admit failure, and agree that there was no way he’d be persuaded into the horse trailer that was to bring him the 70 miles to his new home. We offered him carrots, and corn on the cob, handfuls of grain, apples, horse pellets, and fresh cut hay, we kissed him and cuddled him, we massaged his back and blew in his ears, we promised him every possible reward that we imagined a donkey could imagine — ice-cream every day, a field with a trout stream and shady trees, 25 virgins ( not in the after life but right now), anything and everything,, but none of it worked.

We pulled him and we pushed him , we even tried, one on each corner , to pick him up, one on each corner but he went rigid . Like a block of wood. Nothing worked, it was lunchtime, and he wasn’t as tired as we were, so we walked away, to share despair, a beer and a sandwich. He walked round to the shady side of the trailer, looking smug, He didn’t need lunch, being already full of grain and carrots, so we decided to try again tomorrow, pack up the trailer and drive home, Bloody donkeys.

Half an hour later , me wondering if I might get my cheque back and maybe find a donkey a bit closer ( so we could walk home) we went back to the truck, “You start up , I’ll close the doors……” And there he was, in the trailer, eating hay; I think that’s when I really noticed his smile…

James Barber