Saving Simon (22 page)

It was a golden memory, one of those connections between people and animals that bond us to them, and they to us. We walked all around Rocky’s secret garden, a place that had given him comfort, safety, and food perhaps all of his life, a place tucked away out of the consciousness of any human. And he had shown it to us; he had brought us there, just as he had brought us to the farm.

To this day, Maria cries when she thinks of it.

I’ve learned a lot of things in my time on my farms, and perhaps the single biggest lesson is that my plans and hopes and expectations must be a source of great amusement to whatever forces govern the earth. The farm is a powerful teacher; life and death and crisis and mystery all happen almost daily.

We watched Rocky and the donkeys with some anxiety. We wanted things to work out. We loved these animals and expected to be with them a long time.

Caring for Rocky and keeping him on the farm was one of the most beautiful experiences Maria and I have ever known, and the fact that we could share it made it even more powerful. At first, he seemed to be living in a fog, but as he got to know me, and especially Maria, this changed. He seemed to be thriving. With his teeth fixed, he was eating more comfortably and keeping his weight up, something that was important for an aging pony. He moved more quickly, and sometimes even broke into a trot. One moonlit night I swear I saw Rocky dancing in the mist, out by the stream. He was so sweet and appealing.

Sometimes I would sit and watch him and Maria, as she sang to the pony, talking to him, brushing the burrs out of his coat, this long-neglected creature visibly soaking up the attention. He had someone loving him again, caring for him.

Everywhere we went in our new town, people asked how Rocky was doing and told us how great he was looking, all shiny and brushed. Many people remembered and loved Florence, and many others just loved to drive by and see the pony grazing quietly. Like Florence herself, Rocky was a symbol of other times.

Florence had once said that there was really no reason for either she or Rocky to still be alive; they were both just too
tough to die. Florence’s love of Rocky was perhaps one of the most merciful and compassionate things I had ever seen between a human and animal. It just touched my heart, and deeply.

Caring for Rocky became a part of our lives, our routine, the string of chores that connected Maria and me to the farm, to Simon and the other donkeys, and to the rest of the animals.

It was also a lot of work. Because Rocky had to be kept separate from the donkeys for a while, there was a lot of mucking to do in his stall. He got fresh hay twice a day and we hauled buckets of water in for him. He was also brushed regularly and given special high-calorie grain to put some weight on him for the winter.

We hadn’t quite figured out yet how we would feed him in the winter. The donkeys would be eating in their hay feeder, and we couldn’t expect a blind old pony to bump his way into that scrum.

At the end of two weeks, we were pleased with the acclimation process. Simon and Lulu and Fanny spent a lot of time outside of Rocky’s stall, nosing the gate, sniffing him, staring at him. It seemed as if the herd was already forming. They all seemed to be together a lot of the time, even if separated by a gate. Simon just stared at Rocky sometimes, but otherwise didn’t seem to know he was there.

So at the beginning of the third week, we opened the stall. Red was there, and he walked out with Rocky, who stopped, sniffed the air carefully, and then sniffed for Red.

It took him a few minutes, but he walked out of the pole barn entrance, found his path, and headed out to his pasture, out by the road and alongside the farmhouse. Simon and Lulu and Fanny were a few yards away, and all three of them stared at Rocky and seemed to freeze.

Rocky lifted his nose to sniff them and then trotted quickly down his path. He didn’t seem to care about the donkeys; he just walked past them. Maria and I had decided to be present for the first week or so when Rocky was with the donkeys. We would either be right there watching or in a spot in the house where we could look out and see the pasture. This was relatively easy to do, as the pastures wrapped around three sides of the farmhouse. We decided to be cautious. Rocky would be out for only several hours a day, at first, until everyone could get used to one another. What we were told, what we expected to happen, was that there would be some tension, some curiosity, even some bumping and snorting before things settled down.

There were also gender dynamics to deal with, of course. Rocky was gelded, as was Simon, but males could be competitive around one another. They could also be protective of the females. Most of the people we talked to believed that donkeys were sensitive enough to grasp that Rocky was old and infirm. They would, after a while, have little interest in him.

For the first two weeks of the trial, Maria and I were back and forth in the pasture all day. After a couple of hours, we would bring an apple out, call Rocky, or send Red out to get him. He always followed Red and stayed close to him.

We were pleased with the results. All was going smoothly. Rocky got his exercise, visited his pasture and secret garden, and by afternoon he was back locked safely in his stall. Simon was always vigilant around Rocky, but that was natural for donkeys.

Our theories of animal care—animals with food, attention, and shelter have few reasons to quarrel—were working out. My triad of powerful new animal spirits—Rocky, Red, and Simon—was coming together and living together. Simon was reborn. Red was happy and busy. Rocky was no longer alone.

Here’s the thing about hubris though: you can coast along on it for a good long while, but when you fall off the cliff, it’s a long drop.

By the third week, we no longer felt it was necessary for us to be present. When Rocky was out in the pasture, he kept to his routine—the far pasture grazing in the morning, his secret meadow in the late afternoon. We were planning to keep him out in the outer pasture with the other animals at night, where he had always been, unless the weather was bad. Because of his age, we decided Rocky would have dibs on the stall in the barn if it was awful outside. The donkeys and sheep would have plenty of shelter in the pole barn.

One day I needed to go into town to pick up some groceries. As I was walking to the car, I sensed some movement out in the field and I turned. I saw Rocky walking slowly toward the barn. Beyond him, with his ears flat and his head down—the posture of the charging donkey—was Simon, bearing down on Rocky at full speed.

Red was not in the pasture. Rocky was staying on his familiar path. It was like watching a slow-motion horror film. I saw Simon moving toward the blind creature, and I shouted and ran, waving my arms, hoping to stop Simon or at least alert Rocky.

As I ran toward the gate, I saw Simon plow right into the pony, braying and snorting. He bit Rocky hard on the back, and with his great forward motion drove the pony off of his feet and directly into the electrified fence and fence posts behind him.

Rocky didn’t know what had hit him, and I could hear the charge from the fence crackling and popping as he slammed into it, bounced off, and fell to the ground. Rocky’s ears and tail were twitching. For a second I thought he had died of shock.
Simon, ears still down, circled and began to charge again, just as I opened the gate and, waving my arms and shouting, ran between them.

It is never a wise thing to step between two large animals in conflict, but I didn’t really think about it. The sight of Rocky, stunned, lying next to the fence, struggling to get his footing, was too much for me.

Screaming “Simon, Simon, stop!” I got in front of him before he got to Rocky again. Simon always pays attention to me, and I could not quite believe what I was seeing.

Simon stopped, looked at me, and backed up. I charged at him, shouting and flailing my arms. He turned and ran back to Lulu and Fanny, both standing about fifty yards back watching. He seemed shocked that I had yelled at him.

“I’m sorry, Rocky,” I said, leaning down over the pony as he struggled to get up. Rocky got to his feet, and, panicked, turned and ran back down the pasture out to his corner of the field near the outer fence. I looked up and saw that Simon had circled around and was starting to pursue him there. I got in front of Simon and waved my arms again and drove him back.

Didn’t Simon see that Rocky was old? Helpless? Blind? That he was no threat?

This was Rocky’s home, after all. Simon was the interloper. Didn’t Simon understand? My whole notion of him collapsed right there in the pasture. He was no longer the gentle Platero, walking with me on the path, musing about life. He was something very different.

Maria heard the shouting and came running into the pasture. I told her what had happened.

“Why?” she asked. “Why did Simon do that?”

I had no idea, I said. His aggression seemed to come out of the blue. We were completely unprepared for it.

It took us an hour to get the shocked and rattled pony out of the pasture. First I got the donkeys into the sheep pasture on the other side of the farmhouse and locked them in. Then we sent Red out to sit in front of Rocky and guide him back in. Red’s presence seemed to settle Rocky. He grew calm enough that we could get close to him. We saw some bite marks on his back and hindquarters, but no blood. He seemed to be walking steadily enough.

I kept hearing the sound of him crashing into the fence—it was now bent back several feet—and the popping sound of his body hitting the wire. The fence on the farm hadn’t been charged for years during Florence’s time, so this was probably the first time Rocky felt a shock. Between Simon crashing into him and biting him, and him falling into the wire, I could only imagine how traumatized he was.

We got Rocky back into his stall and let the donkeys back into the main pasture. Simon and the girls came right up to the stall and stood there, only this time I saw a different look on Simon’s face. His ears were up, his eyes were wide, and he was snorting.

Ever since I adopted Simon, a rosy glow had surrounded my notions of animals. Rebirth and resurrection are powerful ideas, and I think animals make it possible to experience both time after time. And, of course, I was a hero. Everywhere I went, people thanked me for saving Simon, for taking him in, for giving the story of his rescue such a happy ending. And among animal people, happy endings are precious, much loved, valued, and shared.

But one thing more powerful than our love of animals is our love of self, and there is no story more gripping or enduring than the ones we like to tell about ourselves.

Simon had, in some ways, and from the first, stopped being a donkey and became a material manifestation of what I needed him to be: Platero, walking gently with me through life, a sweet, grateful, devoted creature, a lover of children, of work, of me.

It’s amazing how the mind works, how you see and hear what you want to see and hear until something shocks you into seeing what you need to see. I called some friends, went online, and pulled some books on horses and donkeys off of the shelf.

This time, everything I saw pointed in a different direction and suggested a different outcome—a different ending that was not happy. Yes, sometimes it works out to introduce a new equine to a herd, but sometimes there is a tough period of acclimation. It is common for donkeys and horses to bite and kick newcomers. It is also quite common for a herd to reject an outsider, especially if he or she is injured or aged. In the wild, these newcomers would draw predators in and endanger the herd. The flock leaders would commonly attack and drive off a weak intruder to protect the herd. In addition, a male is much more likely to drive off a male intruder, even if he is healthy, as it threatens his dominance of the herd.

I was shocked reading this. It was precisely the opposite of what we had been hearing. Why hadn’t I found it before? But it also made perfect sense. I called back all of the people whose advice I had sought, the ones who had said my donkeys and Rocky would work it out.

“Oh,” said one when I described Simon’s assault on Rocky. “It will never work out. Simon is protecting his herd, his women. He’ll never accept a blind old pony.”

Another said sadly over the phone. “Can you find another home for Simon? That’s the only way it can work. You can’t move a blind old pony, and the donkeys will never accept him.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. The same people
who had been so confident about things working out were now telling me it would never work out.

I called a large-animal vet I knew and trusted, one who was experienced treating equines. “I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “Simon is doing his job. He is protecting his herd. He will not submit to a weak old male horse being around the females he is protecting. Rocky is old, tired. This is too much stress for him. He should not be subjected to another winter.”

I asked the vet if she was saying I ought to euthanize Rocky.

“If he were mine, I would,” she said. “I wouldn’t subject him to another winter.” Her words hit me like a bomb. My first thought, honestly, was of Maria. She had come to love Rocky dearly, he was her little pony.