Donkey Work

Postscript

So there, for the moment, we are. The one thing we have learned from our year of donkey keeping is that donkeys don't eat nettles. Not straight from the field, anyway. Only when they are cut down and wilted so the sting doesn't hurt their mouths, said an expert who told us about it one day. And wasn't that reasonable, when one came to consider it?

Perfectly. Except that Annabel – put at last among the fruit trees, with the bracken removed, cages round the apples (better, we thought, than a cage around Annabel), the nettles cut and wilted and nothing to do but pick them up – didn't eat the nettles. She ate all the raspberry canes. Prickles and all, announced Charles, arriving starkly with the news that she'd mown them all to the ground. And then we moved her to another patch of ground and she ate our cultivated hollies. Prickles and all too, until all that remained of months of cherishing by Charles were two little main-stems with the labels fluttering like distress signals from their tops. Got mixed up with the Dandelions, was Annabel's explanation.

That is why, when she is out of her paddock now, she usually has Charles in attendance. Keeping an eye on her while he works to prevent further misunderstandings about dandelions. Unless, of course, she is on the lawn under my jurisdiction. Chasing Solomon and Sheba, who play Donkeys and Indians with her willingly for the perturbation of passers-by. Greeting the tradesmen, who grow nimbler day by day at nipping backwards through the gate with Annabel's nose in their baskets. Clattering into the kitchen for refreshment, which has led to a further discovery. That Annabel likes liquor.

She likes, at any rate, the top off fermenting barley wine. Nectar, commented Annabel when I experimentally offered her the skimmings. Nourishing, she announced, practically knocking the table over in her anxiety to have some more. It took two of us to get her back to the paddock that night, and she ate my tape-measure as she went.

We have very peculiar cats. We now have a peculiar donkey.

Any bets, asks Charles, that come October we have another peculiar member of the household? About two feet high with a liking for barley wine? With ears and a voice like Annabel?

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