JENNY ALPHA DONKEY

jenny

 

Things have changed in the barnyard. Today their second day together, Jack is shy of Jenny, who stands over him, Big Mama in charge. She looks at him like she dares him to take one step toward her, he turns and walks away. He steps too close to her, she whirls around and lets him have it with he back feet perfectly aimed. Jenny is frisky, the woman in charge of the situation, on guard all the time, keeping that teenage sex maniac off her back. She's had to slap him down and put him in his place. She's in the phase today of keeping it fresh in his understanding that she is bigger than him and he already knows she can kick his ass. Jack is sore all over. He lopes along with head down. He didn't want me touch his body today. He liked me to rub his legs, but he was sore everywhere else. Jenny did not want me giving Jack attention, would interrupt us and run him off by turning her rear end to him like she was going to kick. They did kick. Jack was kicking her when she came near him and even the threat of coming near him. Standing between two donkeys kick-boxing turned uncomfortable in a hurry. I had to get out of there, just step aside and give them a chance to cuss each other with their back feet until they were satisfied they'd got it said. I don't know Jenny well enough yet to have any certainty she won't kick me. I knew Jack would not kick me, unless he missed a lick at Jenny, but they don't miss. They are aware of their back legs like I am aware of my arms.

 

jack a-walkin

 

 It's been something like a month or more I've known Jack. In our first days I told him I wanted to learn Donkey nature and asked him to teach me Donkey. And he did. He has been aware of teaching me his ways. I've learned that humility is as much donkey nature as forgiveness is in a dog. I don't mean they are inert. Humility is active in a donkey, not passive. My bluegrass banjo picking friend, Jr Maxwell, had a donkey's humility. It took a long time knowing him to see that he may have been the most humble man I've ever known. He didn't show it. It was automatic in him as it is in a donkey. It was a major part of his nature. His wisdom was the same way. He did not know he had wisdom and would laugh if told he was a model of humility. He'd say you need your head examined. A donkey's humility is like Jr's in that they don't need to advertise it and tell you all about it, it's just part of who they are. They don't even know they have humility. Especially when they start kicking each other. A donkey is a powerful being. They look like ponies with a full-sized horse's head and long ears. Spindly legs with knees that look like a knot in a rope don't appear to have much power. But they do. The muscles of the upper back legs is where a donkey's power is centered. Rubbing Jack's legs I feel a sense of power in them. I talk with him and say things like, "Powerful donkey legs," and sometimes I call him a big powerful donkey. I'm not exaggerating or fantasizing. He likes to hear me tell him he's powerful.

 

donkey rumps

 

I learned very early with Jack that he understood what I said to him. The first learning was the first day I spent time with him, feeding him carrots, rubbing his back and neck. Jack's dinger started swelling up. I backed away from him saying, "We're not going there Jack. That is not what this is about." I would not touch his hind quarters for several days because I did not want to stimulate him sexually. He kept telling me with body language he wanted me to rub his rump. I said Ok and rubbed his rump the same as I rubbed his front shoulders. It did not stimulate him. This was my first learning that to a donkey their rear end is equally important as their front end. They are their full body, not just the front half, is what he was telling me. Rubbing his rump I learned that is where their power is. Big muscles. Seeing Jenny kick and seeing Jack kick, standing on their front feet and using those rump muscles all the way to the knee, snapping those hooves into the target with measured force, I was able to see how good they are with their kicks. Their kicks today were not power kicks. Jack was intimidated, sore everywhere on his body. He kicked Jenny to say, Stay away from me! She kicked him to say, Stay away from me! Like kids in the car's back seat. I have a feeling she hurt his neck; an attempt to bray ends abruptly in pain. She has him beat down in full understanding that Big Mama Donkey rules. She hurt him and she's proud of it. She looks at him with an eye that says: I can kick your ass all over this meadow and you know it. I'm about to start right now. It is a look I have seen between cats. Dogs do it too. Humans do it. Today Jack made a sound I'd never heard before when Jenny approached him in a way that could be taken for aggressive. The sound was a grunt and a groan. I took it for something like a growl in a dog.  

 

jenny

 

In town today, I stopped by CJ Hardware for a 50 pound bag of sweet grain for horses. The woman I bought Jenny from said she gave her sweet grain by hand. I watched her show her granddaughter to put the grain on her hand and let the donkey pick it up with her lips. I took a plastic bowl of the grain and three carrots to the field. I like walking out in the field among them. I like having them around me, touching, close. A memory of an old boy I knew years ago surfaced. He died so long ago I don't remember, around twenty years ago, Sherman Scott. He grew up on the next farm up the road from me. In his later years he lived on a small farm in Pine Swamp, a nice spot. Lived in a little house, lived simply, half a century of grime on everything in the house. No problem. Wood stove and bed in one room. All the other rooms just happened to be connected to the room he stayed in. He was somewhat simple minded, something like a child, though easy to talk with. A round-faced man who wore bib overalls and a plaid shirt, who could not drive a car, could not pass a driving test, but it was legal in NC to drive a tractor without a license. He made a small wooden box, maybe about the holding capacity of a five gallon bucket, but square. He fixed it behind the seat on his red-belly Ford tractor. He drove the tractor to the grocery store, the bank and whatever else business he had in town. Always about half a mile of cars would be following him down Hwy 21 toward Sparta, all the drivers cussing, even the preachers. Sherman had a herd of about twenty cows. One day he took me to show me his cattle. He walked among them in the herd packed together fairly tight in the place they were standing, talking to them individually, petting them as he passed between them, pushing them just enough to let him by, gentle as a child with them. I could feel the joy in the cows that their human was walking among them. It was one of the more memorable moments of my life seeing Sherman walk through his herd, all of them his pets, all of them loving him like faithful dogs.  

 

jack / jenny

 

It felt a little testy going out into the field today with Jenny a frisky Alpha Donkey on full alert, but I also knew she was as gentle as Jack with humans. The day before, we became acquainted. I get down with her and with Jack, eye to eye, when I talk to them, looking into their eyes and them looking at my eyes. They read eyes and I wanted to show Jenny that my eyes have only affection for her. By now, Jack and I know each other very well through the eyes. I have found it important, more than I imagined the first time I thought to bend down a bit and look at him eye-to-eye, as equals, not as me with power over him that he has to look up to. I don't want my relationship with them to be a power-over issue. I don't kick them, they don't kick me. I ask no more than that. Jenny is in a new place, misses her goat friends and the loving people she was taken from by force, is suddenly in a strange meadow with good grass and a teenage boy with nothing but sex on his mind. When she gets haughty with Jack, I think: Honey, there is coming a day you will be backing up to Jack and it won't be to kick him. Today was not that day. Jack has taught me donkey nature well. On sight when I saw Jenny I had a feeling for knowing an awful lot about her. She has a personality difference, but that's about it. Both are African herd animals, well-tuned, and each has it's own personality, like every living entity. Marsha Wagoner, who knows horses awfully well told me they will be friends inside a couple weeks. She said Jack will come back as an assertive male and they will live happily ever after. I believe it because I can see it. Jenny is in a strange place with a donkey she doesn't know that is single-mindedly wanting to hump her. It's like Jenny is saying, Slow down, dude, I don't even know if I like you. And Jack is a man, liking has nothing to do with it.

 

jenny found a scratching post

 

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DONKEY JACK UP CLOSE

 

Donkey Jack gives me a surprise every day. Today when I went into the meadow with his carrots in hand, he came loping from his hideout and danced a brief jig in front of me, moved against me sideways and lightly swung his neck around me. A donkey hug. Yesterday, he came loping to me, put his nose out for my scent, and that final confirmation of what he thought he saw brought light to his eyes. The day before, he ran a short gallop of maybe five yards and swung to my right directly in front of me. It was a swift turn like a polo pony that blew my mind with the grace. He approaches me as a friend every time. His eyes light up when he recognizes who it is. We have passed into a zone of trust in the last few days. Today, after the carrots, after petting and talk with him, I sat on the ground and he grazed around me. Every time I have sat, he has come around to put has backside to me and I got up to move. I didn't know that he's not getting ready to kick. I've never felt like that was his reasoning, but didn't know. Today he turned his backside to me, backed up until his back knees were touching my shoulder, kept on grazing and moved forward a step at a time, keeping an eye on me. I've wondered what that was about. I felt like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzee friends.

 

 

A time when Jack's face was close to mine, I looked into his eye and told him I'd like for him to teach me donkey. I want to learn donkey, how a donkey thinks, what it is that makes donkey besides what I see with my eyes. I want to learn donkey behavior. He put his nose up to my face and felt my face with his nose. I exhaled lightly into his nostril to let him smell my breath. Breath that is rank to me smells good to a four-legged. They still like those smells we humans turn away from. I told him I would help him understand human too. I've seen enough indications he has understood what I was saying, that now I talk to him like I talk to any person. Jack listens, pays close attention. Yesterday while I was talking to him, he put his forehead to mine and we touched foreheads four or five seconds. I feel like I understood why he ran at me the day he played like he wanted to scare me. Herd animals run in fear. Predators run in pursuit. I felt like Jack ran to me in a game of trying to make me jump, because he was afraid. We were still somewhat apprehensive of each other though we'd already connected as friends. He ran to me that day and stopped with his nose just a couple inches from my chest, a sparkle in his eyes like he'd just done something fun.

 

I suspected that would be the last of his running to me. I felt like both of us broke through the apprehension we had of each other. A couple days later he ran a short spell and has not run to me since. My feeling is that his fear of me is fading away daily. Now, he walks to me or does a little lope, a fast walk and a happy dance at once. Now that he is trusting me, he has no need to run. Or so I suppose. He heard me when I said I wanted to learn donkey. I felt like him backing up to me, touching me with his back knees, was consciously telling me something about donkey. I wondered, since four-leggeds tend to claim their territory by various methods from their backsides, maybe Jack was symbolically claiming me, knowing I don't want him to dump on me. A way of saying, I like you. We're friends. I know when he takes a dump, he backs up to one of his toilet piles. He backs up to it just right and they fall where he intends. You can be sure I watched to see if that might be his intent, to mark me his territory. No. He was so close that when he switched his tail back and forth it sometimes hit my face. I watched his leg muscles to see if I could see in advance if he might want to kick. Never once. He kept an eye on me all the time his back end was to me. One thing I know is they don't see shit the way we do. They stick their noses down in it and take a big whiff like it smells good. It has meaning for them that we have lost calling it nasty.

 

I'm wondering, since he backs up to his places where he drops his apples. They fall exactly where he aims. I think of a child's game of dropping something like a clothes pin into a milk bottle from standing up. It's not easy dropping something exactly where you want it without practice. Jack has plenty of practice dropping donkey apples. It tells me he has as much control with his backside as his frontside. Of course he knows his body well. It's everything he has, his only possession. Therefore, I will take it for now that he was telling me something by backing up to me. One, he's not going to kick me. Today I showed him I trust he will not kick me. He even stamped one of his back feet a couple of times like he does over the nuisance flies. Since I've asked him to teach me donkey, I'm taking his gestures, his body language, to have intent behind them to answer my request. I know our minds are connecting now. Jack knows it, too. This means I will pay closer attention to a donkey's way of communicating. I want to learn to communicate with Jack the way donkeys communicate without talking. It's like trying to talk with someone of another language, like Serbo-Croatian with somebody who doesn't know English. It turns into the game charades right away. It can be done. Making no attempt to exchange information, sitting quietly can be an excellent form of communication, possibly the best form.

 

I talk with Jack and sit quietly. I talk to him while he chews carrot chunks. Today I was telling him I know he has an intelligent mind and I'd like to get to know his mind. I'd like to have some insight into what donkeys think about and how they think. I believe I've had some insight in seeing that his running was an expression of fear. This is an untrained donkey, so he doesn't know about running by command. I don't handle him, don't push him around, don't push him aside saying, Get outta my way ya dumb jackass!  I don't give him any sign that I believe I'm in charge of him. I let him know that I am not in charge of him. Jack is an independent autonomous being with the same rights I claim for myself. This is the Jack I want to know. I don't believe giving him commands and putting a rope on him will help our communication  unless necessary, and I can explain to him the need. I give him the same respect I give a human, making no special thing about it. I'm seeing his face now as he approaches me when we meet in the field, his conscious, intelligent eyes looking at me. I want to know the person in there. And I see the person in there wants to know the person in me. I can see Jack likes that I've taken an interest in the person within, who he is. We've connected. I must never take it for granted, but always honor it.

    

 

 

I've been noticing that Jack doesn't really like being touched. I don't blame him. Who wants somebody to walk up to you and start rubbing your face or petting your back? He mostly moves away from a touch unless he invites it. I'll pay attention to that. He likes to be brushed, but not every day, only when his hair starts looking scruffy. Then he likes it. Evidently the brush messes up his layer of dust he keeps in his hair inhibit the flies. He likes to feel my hand move over his back and along his ribs, but only after he knows that's what touching him was about. My hand doesn't remove his fly shield. After I'd brush him, he'd go wallow on his dust spot. I'll ask permission before I touch him now. More than likely suddenly being touched startles him. I'll speak to him about touching him first, see if that takes the edge off the natural instinct not to want to be touched. I am aware that he never knows what to expect from a human's hands, so I sometimes keep them behind me, mostly down at my sides. I am conscious to move my hands slowly and keep them in his sight. He's comfortable when he knows where my hands are. Even when they're rubbing his back and neck, he knows where they are. I'm getting the impression Jack is in awe of me, or donkeys are in awe of humans, for having arms and hands. I must remember to be more conscious of my hands with Jack the African Wild Ass. His donkey reflexes are instant.

 

 

 

 

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