DONKEY AT HOME

jenny

 

Jenny has become a new donkey. She's sweet and gentle, likes me to touch her, likes me close to her, even likes my hand on her back, which she'd never allowed before. She's become charming. She's far less aggressive with Jack. This morning I slept til noon after going to bed at 4, missing carrot time and bird feeding time. It's a cruel world. I didn't feel like doing anything, so I made some coffee and called Carole. We talked an hour and I was ready to start. Put seeds in the bird feeders and carried some carrots to the donkeys. They were grazing nearby. I walked out into the meadow and sat down under a maple tree. I watched them graze, enjoyed seeing them from inside their world without them gathering around me. It was quite pastoral, sitting in the shade watching donkeys graze. These were not just donkeys. They were Jenny and Jack, my friends who happen to be donkeys, people I know well, love, appreciate and am learning to understand. Finally, it's gone from my head that I can learn about donkeys from somebody else. These particular two are the donkeys I know. I can only get to know them by paying attention to them, not by reading a book or consulting a website. Learning from the donkeys themselves is better than any other way. I've realized that now. It is a good time to see it, now that Jenny is at home after six months of grief losing her friends from before the abduction that brought her here. She has fallen in love with Jack and turned Alpha over to him. I'm wondering, too, if she used her Alpha role for self-defense, to give herself some space in this new meadow where she was thrown in with an equine man obsessed with only one thing on his mind, and it was not her sweet personality.

 

 

jenny

 

I've felt for what Jenny went through coming here, swept up against her will, over-powered, muscled into a trailer she did not want to enter. She hated it. She had goat friends, one in particular, and the humans handled her lovingly, not as stock. Jack put her through some exercise. She fought him daily, was rambunctious all the time, swinging around on Jack and popping him with her back hooves. I stayed out of the meadow for a month. Didn't even take them carrots. Jack had no time for me and Jenny didn't want to know me. I let them do their donkey thing, get acquainted, settle down into whatever kind of relationship donkeys have.  Sold from her family to be a concubine for a man with nothing on his mind but raping her, the only part of her that meant anything to him was a spot under her tail. Stories I've seen in Chinese films and novels of the old ways, Asian ways, of selling their girls in marriage to the highest bidder. It's done here too, just more subtle. The girl is taken to the wedding by her family and taken away from the wedding by whatever man made the highest bid. This is how I see Jenny, a Chinese girl from the old ways wedded to a man who was somebody else's pick for her. One of the many reasons I stayed out of the meadow in the first month was Jenny hated her situation and I did not want her to have many associations with me in the time she hated what had happened to her. She knew I was involved. I was the one bought her for Jack. I only said that word to Jenny once, talking to her telling her I'm happy she was here with Jack and me, and I said I'm happy I bought you. A gloom came over her that I could feel as well as see, like when a black cloud passes overhead. Never said it again and will never. Since then, I tell her every day I'm glad she's here.

 

jenny munches carrot

 

When I call her or Jack "my donkey," it's the same as saying my friend or my cousin, not a matter of ownership. I own them in that nobody can take them away from here without my permission. I give these two donkeys refuge in a world where they live under human rule no matter where they are. Here, in the meadow beside my house, they are with a friendly, a human who appreciates who they are, who wants for them an opportunity to live their donkey nature, have a mate, think donkey thoughts, have donkey desires. I want to give them a life where their donkey nature is not inhibited by human purposes. Fed and protected by a friendly human who wants to know who each one of them is, who wants to communicate with them, is the life I offer them. I want our relationship to be one of love not fear. It's just like my dogs and my cats over the years. I never trained them. Would not know how to train them. I loved them, they loved me in turn, they wanted to please me, they paid close attention and fell right in with my rhythms, never required even scolding. We live harmoniously. I have this with the donkeys now. Jenny's grief ran its course, she's fallen in love with Jack after six months of living with him, adjusting to his ways as an individual donkey as well as a bull donkey, she's let her defenses down. She has liked Jack for a long time. Jenny came out of the first month of intense getting to know each other liking Jack. She's liked Jack for five months, the time of shaping each other to their own ways and accustoming self to the ways of the other, gradually relaxing.

 

jenny with jack on her mind

 

They were rampageous for about three weeks here lately, so much that I stayed out of the meadow, allowed them plenty of space for whatever was going on between them. It was hyper sexual, an equine dance of the feminine wanting to be conquered, will only give herself to a man with the power to conquer her. Jack being the smaller of them took some time learning how to conquer Jenny. He has learned to take charge of her by now in no uncertain terms when he means it. And she loves it. I can see in her she likes being conquered. It's sexy. Jenny is a foxy babydoll too. Jenny twisted an ankle in their rowdy time a couple weeks ago, had to favor the foot for four days. She gave Alpha to Jack and he gave it back when her ankle felt better. She didn't have Alpha back a week when she turned the role back over to Jack. This coincided with her falling in love with Jack. Her size and the Alpha role helped her accustom herself to her new life. The role was her protection. She doesn't need protected anymore. She loves Jack now and she wants to be with him. She found in the four days of Jack as Alpha that he protected her, kept a lookout for anything that might be a threat to his babydoll. She relaxed so much that I treasured those days for the chance to see Jenny without the Alpha role. I liked the Jenny I saw an awful lot. It went away when she returned to Alpha. This just happened to be the time she was falling in love with Jack. My feeling is that she likes being relaxed, letting Jack take care of Alpha duties, like keeping dogs out of the meadow. Jack seems comfortable in the new role. He feels protective toward Jenny. He's been in love with her for some time. Yesterday and today I see the love light in Jenny includes the ice cream man. She is letting me touch her like never before. She likes it now. She let me pull a tick off her forehead today. I showed it to her and let her watch me crush it on a rock with a rock. She's not apprehensive of my hands anymore. Jenny is glowing in the light of love right now. I'm happy to be included.  

 

donkey jen

 

 

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