My Million-Dollar Donkey (20 page)

The two baby birds were still weak, so I let them stay in the warm incubator for a few hours to fluff out and get their sea legs. After dinner, we discovered another duck hatchling. Peeping was coming from eggs that were now moving on their own accord, rolling the slightest bit as the inhabitants struggled to greet the world. As my fascinated family stood by, all six of the duck eggs hatched.

All I could think about was the eggs I tossed into the woods. Had there been little baby ducks only one day from hatching curled inside as I hurled them to their demise? I felt awful.

The baby birds were now becoming more active, so I removed them from the incubator to a brooder cage heated by a light bulb. The young ducks behaved aggressively with the peacock, and since she was my most prized new chick, I put her in a cage of her own. She looked small and lonely in there, full of energy but anxious and uncomfortable in a cage all alone. She kept running back and forth, sticking her beak through the bars, acting frantic compared to the ducks who were all nestled together in a contented clump. I tapped on the incubator, trying to guilt the other peacock eggs into hatching, but the eggs lay there like dead rocks.

I named the peacock Early since she was the first bird to hatch, and by the next morning, I worried she might be the only egg to hatch because all the other eggs were quiet and still. Early obviously wasn’t getting companions anytime soon, so I went to the feed store to ask for advice.

The proprietor, Linda, recommended I buy my peacock a chicken buddy just in case the other eggs didn’t hatch at all.

“Will a chicken and a peacock get along?” I asked.

“If you raise the two birds together, the chicken will think she’s a peacock. No problem.”

Every Lone Ranger deserves a Tonto, I decided, so I picked out a cute chick. The moment I put them together, they became fast friends.

Eight days later, the remaining peacock eggs still sat lifeless in the incubator. This gave Early epic standing as a special bird. She was not just my only peacock, but tangible proof that I wasn’t a complete idiot in the incubation arena. By now, Neva and I agreed to call it a day and clear out the incubator to make room for something else.

“I guess I’ll just throw the eggs out,” I said, thinking this had been a rather expensive experiment, considering Early had just become a $116.00 peacock chick.

“We have to open the eggs first,” Neva said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, honey, I can’t. What if there are birds inside that were almost ready to hatch, but died at the last minute? I don’t want to see half-formed peacocks. That would be too sad.”

“We
have
to open them,” she insisted. “That’s what the book tells you to do and the only way to determine if you did something wrong.”

“Whatever you do, just handle those eggs far away from the house,” Mark said, remembering the stench of exploding duck eggs.

In the end, Neva was insistent, so I agreed to open the eggs
far
away from the house. We hiked up a hill with the still warm peacock eggs in my infamous dead thing bowl. Neva brought a small garden shovel and dug a grave for a communal bird burial, which we agreed would be appropriate in case we found dead baby peacocks inside. If all we found was rotten undeveloped eggs, a nice deep hole would cover up the smell.

We crouched beside the hole and I picked up an egg.

“Couldn’t we just bury the eggs whole?”

“No way, Mom. Crack it open. Aren’t you dying to see what’s inside?” she said with curious, bright eyes.

“Not a bit.”

“Well, I am,” she said, leaning closer.

I tapped the egg with the edge of the shovel. Out slipped a gooey yolk that looked like any egg you might open from the supermarket, except for the orange yolk, of course. The gooey mess didn’t even smell.

Neva frowned and dug into the goo with a stick. “There isn’t even a vein of blood. I bet this egg wasn’t fertilized. Try another one.”

Swallowing, I picked up a blue peacock egg and cracked this one open. Again, we found nothing but goo.

“What a gyp,” Neva said.

I thought so, too, but not because we were being cheated out of viewing interesting bird embryos at different stages of development. I was thinking someone on eBay sold me the bird version of the Brooklyn Bridge.

We opened the last three eggs. The insides were thicker, like a dab of pudding was plopped in the middle, but there was no telling if the eggs had begun to develop or the yolks were just getting so old they were hardening.

“At least now we know we probably didn’t do anything wrong,” Neva announced, pushing dirt on top of the little scrambled egg grave. “We can try again someday.”

After all that money and 48 days of sleep down the drain, my enthusiasm for homegrown peacocks had drastically dimmed, but I kept that opinion to myself. I thanked her for making me open the eggs, admitting that knowing is better than not knowing. She gave me a “told ya so” grin.

As we walked back to the house, Neva paused to pick some wildflowers. Spying a cricket, she bent down to place the bug in the dead things bowl for a quick study. I could see my girl was growing up curious about the world, engaged with the core truths about life, and sensitive rather than sentimental. I had a single peacock now to add elegance to my world, but in that moment, I believed true elegance walked beside me in the form of a beautiful, inquisitive child with dirt under her fingernails, and a healthy love for nature.

“I can’t believe you’re living on a farm,” my mother said when she came to visit.

“This is not a farm. We’ll be living in a million dollar cabin in the Georgia mountains. I’m just raising some animals on the side for fun.”

“You have a garden. Chickens. A peacock. A donkey. Horses. Rabbits. This is a farm.”

“A real farm supports itself. It makes money. A real farm has pigs. I don’t have pigs.”

Her eyes slipped to mine. “Why not pigs?”

“Mark drew the line at pigs. I did, however, donate to a “save the pigs” campaign.”

“See? You’re living on a farm. Just not a successful farm,” she said. “You two retired with all that money, and you could have gone anywhere or done anything. You chose a farm.”

“Land’s a good investment. We still plan to travel and do some lovely things with our retirement.”

“When?”

“When Mark is done building his house. He’s promised.”

She lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “If anyone ever told me you’d end up here during those years you danced in New York City, I’d never have believed them.”

“I admit moving to the country wasn’t a part of my life plan when I was young, but living here has been a great adventure.”

“I thought you sold the studio to have a less stressful life.” She stepped over a pile of horse droppings and gave me a “do you see that?” stare.

“Me, too,” I confessed.

Seeing our world through my mother’s eyes made me feel foolish and very, very tired. I was the artsy girl who liked to wear long skirts, high heels and big earrings. I loved museums, Broadway shows and dance concerts. I preferred experimental theater to sporting events, and wine tastings to tailgate parties. I
fit
when I lived in the city. So, how was it, then, that I
fit
here in the middle of the country, too, with nothing but a donkey and some peacock experiments to stimulate my imagination?

You’d think I had a split personality, and perhaps I did. For years, the city girl had the upper hand, obscuring the quiet shadow of the country girl who, unbeknownst to us all, was buried in my bosom. Now, the country girl demanded her turn at bat, scratching her way to the surface with such aggression I couldn’t help but wonder if my self-image as a dancer was only surface deep after all.

I wanted to blame this change on menopause. I prayed for hot flashes. Nothing. I was the same person I’d always been, only now my natural curiosity and my tendency to do everything 110 percent had wandered away from dance and towards sustainable living. I was still that girl with the middle-class American upbringing, a credit card-carrying member of the consumer class with all the expectations and sense of entitlement that came with the role. The difference was, now I had a donkey.

My husband of seventeen years was feeling the same pull towards this polar opposite world as I was, so there had to be something to our change of heart. Perhaps it was a fluke that two separate individuals were experiencing the same shifts in perspective at the exact same rate. Had one spouse not been on board, the entire experiment would have collapsed under the weight of uncertainty, for sure. But just as some couples start to look alike or begin finishing each other’s sentences after many years together, we seemed to have developed a common vision that had us both balking at what was considered “the norm” for people of our background and potential. If living on a farm had taught me one undeniable thing, I’d discovered that instinct always prevailed over training. So it was with animals. So it was with us.

One day, as Chris, my burly cowboy-farrier friend carved away at my horse’s hooves, he asked, “What’s the donkey for?”

“Just a pet. I’m told they make good guard animals.”

“What’s he guarding?”

“Nothing yet, but someday I might get some sheep. We had a goat once, but I wasn’t too keen on him. Sheep, however, might be interesting.”

Chris’s expression made clear he considered keeping sheep about as pleasant as rolling in poison ivy. “I’m a horse man myself. Had a buffalo once. Damn near killed anyone who came near the fence. I sold him.”

I made a mental note to scratch buffaloes off my wish list. Not that I had a buffalo on my wish list, but after the donkey, I no longer trusted my whims to remain explainable. “I think a llama would be cool. They’re exotic and otherworldly.”

His expression made clear he considered my wanting an animal for anything other than practical use the height of self-indulgence.

I grew defensive. “I’m a writer, after all. I learn about things by experiencing them. If I had a llama, I’d write about the experience.”

Being a writer had become my catchall explanation for anything I wanted to do that might come across as impractical to my new country acquaintances. No one ever asked what kind of books I wrote. Literature was something the locals admittedly didn’t care much about, so whenever I professed my avocation, the words hung in the air like a fart people chose not to acknowledge.

“Well, I know a fellow who’ll sell you a llama for cheap,” Chris said. He wrote the man’s name on the back of my bill.

I had only been speculating for fun, but thought I might pass the name on to Mark. My birthday was coming up and a llama would be a rather cool present.

“No way,” Mark said when I handed him the llama trader’s name with a brazen hint.

Six weeks later I was the surprised recipient of a huge black llama wearing a red birthday bow around his neck.

The llama was an odd, prehistoric-looking creature with a long neck, curved ears, and thick, feathery-looking fur. He had thin legs, two-toed hooves, and large soulful eyes fringed in long lashes. He moved as gracefully as a reincarnated ballerina, head held high as his feet treaded gingerly through the wildflowers in the pasture. One look at him and I wanted to burst out singing
A Whole New World
.

“You can name your llama whatever you want,” Mark said.

“What was the llama’s name before?”

Mark had decided that he wouldn’t share that information unless I twisted his arm.

“You don’t want to know. Trust me, you’ll be changing his name.” “Well, now you
have
to tell me. How bad can his old name be?” Mark paused a moment, then sheepishly said, “They called him Nigger, claiming the name fits because he is black and ornery.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“Tried not to.”

Mark suggested I name the llama Dalai, just so I could say the Dalai llama lived at our house. Not very original, but I didn’t care. In that moment, I was leaning toward calling him Martin Luther King, just for principle
.

I thought Dalai was exotic and remarkably cool. I had seen llamas before, but never in my own backyard. While llamas are often aloof, this one was friendly enough, taking cookies from my hand and venturing to the feed bucket when the horses came for their meal. Most of the time, he paced the pasture from end to end, as if he were memorizing how many steps he must take to cross. After several weeks of diligent exploration, he picked out a favored spot in the pasture and plopped to the ground, rolling over and sticking his feet straight up into the air.

“Your llama is dead,” Mark said every time he drove up and saw the animal laid out like a carcass cooking in the sun.

“Har, har,” I’d say, but just in case I’d shout or take a few steps in the animal’s direction, needing confirmation that the dang thing was indeed alive. I didn’t know if this animal’s nutritional needs differed from the horses, or if a llama should be wormed, or have his feet trimmed, or if his wooly coat needed to be treated for fleas.
Do they make a flea collar that big?
I wondered, thinking I really needed to learn more if I wanted to keep this pet alive and well.

Back to Amazon. I immediately ordered several books on llamas and joined the Llama Association of America. Apparently, country adventure had a cost beyond the original investment since each project required I stumble around trying to figure my way through the maze of new challenges.

I learned there are things you can do with a llama. They can be taught to pull a cart, and to haul packs when you go camping in rugged mountains. But I didn’t need my new pet to be useful. Mostly, I just planned to stare at him, fascinated. The horses, however, were not as amused. They kept their distance, kicking up the dirt and whinnying. They scurried to get away every time the llama ventured close.

“They act like Dalai’s a leper. Poor guy is all alone.” I complained. “Don’t get any ideas. One fancy yard ornament is enough,” Mark said, turning his attention back to another book on house building. One llama was certainly enough to satisfy my curiosity for came-lids, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for a herd animal forced to spend his days alone.

My horse, Dixie, finally gave birth two days later, and my concerns over Dalai’s single status were put on hold.

The foal came on April 15th. We considered naming her “Taxes,” but chose “April” instead. I’d been spending a great deal of time around the pasture in anticipation of the baby horse’s arrival, but as luck would have it, I missed the delivery by only a few minutes. Mark called to tell me he stopped by the pasture to discover a newborn carbon copy of Dixie, still glistening wet, standing on wobbly legs under her mother. I was washing my car, but the minute I got his message, I raced out to the land, white suds flying off my vehicle like snow.

April was sturdier than expected, with long legs, a slim body, and a soft brown coat. She looked like a deer with a big head. Frisky and remarkably self-sufficient, she stuck close to her mother, but only a few hours later, she had enough confidence to bound a few yards away, exuberant and curious about the world.

The other horses accepted the newcomer with admirable tolerance, but Donkey seemed most pleased. Donkey and baby April became fast friends, kicking up their heels and instigating games to bring action and entertainment to the quiet pasture.

Our job now, according to the books, was to “desensitize” the new colt. Each day we tried to make contact. We would devote a half hour to catching the colt so we could put a halter on. I’d tug at the rope while Mark or one of the kids would push the colt’s backside, a task not unlike attempting to get a parked car to move. Suddenly, the colt would dart forward, yanking us off our feet and we’d be running at the end of the rope as if we were attached to a speeding whirl-a-gig ride at the county fair.

“Imagine having to do this with a wild, frightened, adult-sized horse,” I said when April had given us a particularly hard time.

Everyone nodded. Dabbling with animals and working the land certainly made us thankful to be living in an enlightened and cushy age where the definition of hard work was setting up a new computer rather than living off the land, literally.

Adding both a young horse and a llama to my ever-growing ark meant additional chores were suddenly piled onto my already task-ridden days. The feed bills escalated, now hovering around two hundred dollars a month, which is less than many women who retire with a million dollars might spend on a personal trainer or other hobby interests, but still I felt guilty about the costs, so I stopped nail and hair appointments to compensate.

Meanwhile, Dalai’s hair had grown into Rastafarian dreadlocks that looked torturously hot, so I purchased a pair of wool shears and Mark and I spent three days trying our hand at wool shearing. We were left with blistered hands, an insatiable wool itch that hung on for days, and a llama which looked like a poodle run over by a lawn mower. Still, we felt a great sense of accomplishment. I put the wool aside thinking I could use the fiber for something, but I’d have to read up to figure out what.

In the meantime, April’s skeletal system would not be well-formed enough to put weight on her back for two years. The cost of feed and maintenance for those twenty-four months of growing, not to mention the labor involved in preliminary training, meant we’d have to make a hefty investment in our baby horse long before we ever could ride her.

Caring for three horses, a llama, and a donkey was already more than I could handle alone. Adding a colt to the mix almost put me over the edge. Mark reminded me we could sell a six-month-old weaned colt for a modest sum, but April was a member of the family now, and I loved the romantic notion that she was born on our land and would live there for all her days.

To me this new pet was like the biggest dog in the world, with an appetite and vet bills that paralleled her massive size. I dreamt of the day I’d ride her all over our fifty acres, yet when she was eighteen months old, Ronnie offered to buy her, and damned if I didn’t say yes. The time to begin training her was near and the fact was, I was too old, too inexperienced, and too much a beginning rider to do the job of a seasoned cowboy. I could go to Amazon and buy all the DVDs, books, and videos on the market for training a horse (and I certainly tried), but an academic understanding of the process wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans when a powerful horse started flipping out while I was onboard for the first time. April was going to a good home and that was all that mattered.

Every time an animal is removed from the pasture, the dynamic of the herd changes. When April left, Dixie was agitated. Donkey was lonely. My other two horses started acting aggressively as they reestablished positions in the hierarchy. Dalai still kept to himself, all alone after 18 months. So, when I read an ad in the paper for a female llama, registered and going cheap, I couldn’t resist. Days later, the second llama joined the herd, and Dalai’s lonely days were history. Apparently within an hour of unloading her into the pasture, the new llama had not only become friends with Dalai, but she was pregnant. I now had an exciting new adventure to look forward to. A baby llama!