Saving Simon (11 page)

“I think she is a gypsy, Simon,” I said. “A donkey lover.” The woman turned at the base of the hill, waved, and blew us some kisses. I wasn’t sure she was real, but I saw the tracks on the road, and Simon was still chomping on the hard biscuit she had given him. The three of them vanished down the curve in the road.

“This is already an adventure,” I said.

Simon started to cross the road, and then, of course, stopped
right in the middle. Since cars and trucks came down the hill at reckless speeds, this made me uncomfortable, but I knew he wouldn’t stay there long, as there was tall fresh grass right on the other side.

Simon figured this out for himself and then walked across the road and started pulling the grass out. This set off another round of anxious—perhaps jealous—braying from Lulu and Fanny.

Simon was having none of that; he was beginning to enjoy his walk. So far so good. A lady with a biscuit who loved him, a man in a truck, fresh grass, cookies from me.

Donkeys are innately curious, and Simon always seemed fascinated by the world around him. Perhaps because of his lonely confinement, the world seemed compelling to him. He seemed interested in every truck, every kid, every person that he met. And this idea of exploring new territory seemed to please him.

I let him chew on the grass a bit, and then I said, “Come on, Simon, let’s go see Maria. She is in her studio.” I explained Maria’s work to him, how she made fiber art—quilts, scarves, pot holders, hanging pieces—and sold them on the Internet.

I loved this idea of explaining the world to Simon. It opened up a rich and deep vein in me. I was not the least bit self-conscious or uncomfortable with it. It seemed one of the most natural things I had done.

I do not talk to my dogs in this way, or other animals. I do talk to donkeys a bit, but especially Simon. I was beginning to understand why strange men—Jesus, Cervantes, Napoléon, Caesar, the pharaoh Ramses—had been talking to donkeys for centuries.

Something about the animals invited it, their companionability, their daydreaming, their spirituality, their curiosity.

We walked up the hill and appeared in front of the large plate glass window that formed the east side of Maria’s studio. I tapped on the glass. Maria, bent over her sewing machine, broke into a wide grin. Frieda, her Rottweiler-shepherd mix, started barking, but Simon paid her no mind. He was not impressed with the posturing of dogs. He had seen too much, and I suspect he considered dogs a vastly inferior life form.

Maria came running out the side door. “Simon!” she exclaimed, and she brought a handful of dog biscuits, which he happily devoured. We were beginning to see that he was a garbage disposal. He ate anything: leftover vegetables, pasta, bread, and crusts. And dog biscuits. Why not?

We stood by the side of the road for a few minutes, all of us beaming. I was proud of the walk; Maria was delighted by the visit. So was Simon. We hung around for a bit, and then we turned around. Lulu and Fanny were beside themselves now. We were beginning to drift out of sight, and Simon answered them with a raucous bray. He seemed to have gotten some new marching orders, as he trotted rapidly—to my relief—across the road and back up to the pasture gate.

I patted Simon. I opened the trash can filled with supplies and took out three hard oat cookies. I gave them to him one at a time, and he chewed each one thoughtfully, carefully, thoroughly. I encouraged him with some praise and some gratitude. The evening sun was settling in among the gray-crystal rain clouds, and a soft breeze was tiptoeing up the valley. I scratched behind Simon’s filthy ears, the gnats and horseflies scattering in panic, and I felt the dawn of joy between us.

Our work had brought us out into the world, defined our relationship, suggested our future. We looked out at the town together.

Have I told you, Simon, that the soul of our world is money?
It is all people talk about, all they care about. Who has time in this world to walk with a donkey, get to know one, or care about them? We are too busy making decisions, saving money, worrying about our future. Platero’s world is gone, I said. I don’t know if it exists anywhere in the world anymore.

Perhaps we can re-create a slice of it here, in this small hamlet in upstate New York, far from the crowds that make the decisions that run the world. The walk felt like that, it felt good, something powerful and old, something men and donkeys used to take the time to do. Let’s do it again, Simon, I said. Let’s try it while we can.

Simon was listening to me, his ears whirling to catch every tone in my voice, every emotion. He snorted, checked my hands and pockets, and walked to the pasture gate.

I dropped the halter, opened the gate, and walked him in. I took the halter off, and he and the ladies went running up the hill to the pole barn.

Two asses on the road. Just right.

NINE
 

As Simon grew stronger
and healthier, he changed. He was, if anything, even more affectionate. But he also developed a bit of a swagger, a sense that he was the prince of the pasture—not one of the herd, but the leader of the herd. It was often necessary for Lulu or Fanny to kick him in the head, but it didn’t seem to slow him down or humble him in any way.

He stood up on the hill with his chest puffed out—though his legs were still a little wobbly—and it seemed that this was his farm, his pasture. This former creature of deprivation had become the donkey of entitlement, perhaps because he was being spoiled rotten daily.

There was a tangible point, though, when Simon left the whole rescue thing behind—animals never have as much use for it as people do—and asserted his natural self, which was anything but cowed or piteous.

This was during the great Fox Attack of 2012, when Simon embraced his potential and cemented his leadership of his new farm.

We had a few chickens, including two Rhode Island Reds named Fran and Meg. I was taking a photo of one of our hens who was pecking at the grass about ten feet in front of me when I was startled to look in the viewfinder of my camera and see nothing but feathers trailing down from the sky. I looked up and the chicken was gone, just a pile of feathers left on the ground.

I looked all around but saw nothing. It seemed a hawk—we had seen her circling for days—had swooped down right in front of me and scooped our hen up and took her off for dinner.

We kept the hens in a relatively secure part of the barn. Other than the hawk, we had had no trouble from predators. We always credit the donkeys with keeping coyotes and stray dogs away; they are guard animals, protective of their pastures and the things in them. We had never had a run-in with a fox, but we had heard a lot about them from farmers. They are one of the smartest animals in the world: brave, stealthy, and intuitive. They seem to adopt strategies, stay away from humans, watch and wait.

The first sign of trouble came when I got up one morning to let the dogs out early. Frieda, our Rottweiler-shepherd mix, started barking furiously, and our Lab, Lenore, a peaceful creature, even chimed in. I ran to the front door and saw a neighbor walking with her husky and pointing up to the pasture.

Something was up. I ran outside and looked up the hill just in time to see Simon with his head lowered charging down the hill from the pole barn. I looked to the right and saw a bright red fox holding Fran in his mouth and trying to run up the hill with her. The fox looked up to see Simon charging straight at him. He sized up the situation, dropped the hen, and took off underneath the pasture fence where there was a small drainage
ditch, the one place Simon could not pursue him. Then he vanished up the hill. Fran wobbled down to the barn and collapsed. She had deep bite marks on her leg and one wing.

Simon stood staring up the hill, snorting and breathing heavily as he watched the fox retreat. I ran over to the neighbor, and she told me what had happened.

She was walking up the hill with her husky when she saw Simon circling and then charging. She saw that a fox was pursuing one of our hens, Meg, who had run for her life, squeezing under the pasture gate and running across the road, where she was presumably still hiding in the tall grass.

The fox turned back and tried to grab a second hen—there was no sign of her now—when I let Frieda out and she had charged to the gate. The fox stopped, checked Frieda out, and ran to the other side of the pasture, ignoring Simon and Frieda, and sneaking around to dart in and grab Fran, who was hiding under the hay feeder. He got her, but not before Simon saw him and charged again.

I thanked the neighbor and looked up at the top of the pasture. I was astonished to see the fox sitting at the upper pasture gate, staring down at the farm, looking for the hens he almost got to bring home.

I called my neighbor who lived at the top of the hill, and he said, oh yes, there was a fox den up there. Four or five kits and mom and dad out hunting. He couldn’t bear to shoot at the foxes once he had seen the babies.

I could, at least at first. Nobody with a farm and chickens will look the other way when a fox comes around. I grabbed my .22 and ran up the hill. The fox stared at me. Halfway up, I lay down, sighted the rifle—he was right in my sights—and fired. The fox gave me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look and then just sauntered off.

I told Maria we were in for it. We had never been up against a wily fox before, and we had heard nothing but horror stories about their perseverance and intelligence.

We collected poor Fran—she was alive but just barely—and got her into the barn. Maria got out her creams and ointments, cleaned out her wounds, and put her in a dog crate. Chickens are not nice to their injured colleagues; they will peck them to death if they can get near them.

We tried to figure out what to do about the other hens and went to find the survivors. When chickens are attacked, they flee toward the nearest hiding places. They might hide for a day or so. Chickens have no natural defenses and can’t fly away from their predators or run too fast. All they can do is go into shock. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to find Meg, but Maria went across the road and called out to her, and she popped her head up in the grass and ran across the road to Maria like a scared schoolkid running for her mom.

Many people read about this on my blog and e-mailed me or posted messages on Facebook urging me to build a predator-proof shelter, but I had been on my farm too long and had learned too much for that. Predator-proof chicken shelters are expensive, and even then, never truly predator proof. We valued the idea of free-range chickens. We loved seeing them parade industriously around the farm.

Besides, we had some weapons to use against the fox that might make a difference: Lulu and Fanny, and now, it seemed, our latest hero, Simon.

I kept seeing the fox all day, walking back and forth at the top of the pasture, keeping his eyes on his potential dinner. I imagined he was eager to bring food back to his offspring. He was also on to me. Whenever I went outside of the house with the rifle, he vanished, and when I was gone, he reappeared.
There are all kinds of predators in the country, but none as cunning and determined as a fox. Every farmer I knew told tales of being outsmarted and defeated by them. One farmer, a neighbor, told me to forget about the chickens: “He will figure out how to get them, and he’s smart enough to take them right out from under your nose.”

The next morning, Maria and I drove the ATV to the top of the pasture, and we found the fox’s den. It actually looked right down on the farm, and the fox—his mate, too, perhaps—could look down the hill and see the chickens pecking around. We had locked them up for a few days, hoping the fox might get distracted by some fresh opportunities—rabbits or mice, maybe even a woodchuck—but that was unlikely. He had put his mouth on one hen and gotten some feathers from another. He wasn’t going anywhere.

The den had two holes on either side of a hedge—foxes build escape tunnels. As we walked near the den, we saw three kits—baby foxes—come out and play with one another, wrestling and running in circles. I got some photos of them and put them up on my website. This is it, I said to Maria. I can’t shoot any of these animals.

And it was true. I didn’t have it in me to shoot the mother or father and leave starving babies, and I certainly didn’t have the heart to kill the babies. Perhaps I don’t have the heart of a true farmer, but I just couldn’t do it. We would have to think of something else.

As we puzzled and fretted, it felt a bit like we were under siege. Poor Fran was a horrible mess. I wanted to shoot her and put her out of her misery, but Maria was determined to nurse her back to health.

We had greatly underestimated Simon. He seemed to take the fox attack personally. Lulu and Fanny would circle around
if a stray dog or coyote came around, but they were gentle souls and had never charged an animal like Simon had.

And that was just the beginning. The animals didn’t really need our help as it turned out. Simon instantly turned into our own secret service, taking the idea of a guard donkey to new heights.