Let sleeping donkeys lie.

My first unprotected contact since the day of “the attack” with Catalunya came on accident.  We saw him in the neighbor’s pasture.  We rode the 4-wheeler over, (which he hated due to the loud noise of it’s engine) cut the fence, and coaxed him through the opening with some hay.  It was pretty easy.  I was unprotected out in the field with him walking behind me.  We eased home without injury.

The next evening Catalunya was checking out the new corral area we were constructing for him just outside of the barn.  Gates open.  We practice letting him walk in and closing one gate and always leaving him an escape route. Around dusk I was filling his water when a coyote ran smack into the fence closed gate of the new corral. Catalunya looked up from his water and I dropped the hose in surprise.  First coyote I’d ever seen.  Our neighbor was surprised and explained how unusual it is to see a coyote in broad daylight, in an area inhabited by a person, a dog, and a donkey.  After a while, I realized that it was running as if it were being chased.  Frantic to escape his stalker, he ran smack into us without realizing we were even there.

That same night he was not in the yard around 8pm when I went to check on him.  I called and worried.

I heard his bray from far away around 3 am.  I sat bolt upright in the bed.  Something was scaring him and he was not home.  Zippy moved to the couch while I put on my coveralls and boots. The four-wheeler was too cold to start so I grabbed my mop handle and flashlight and walked to the fence praying not to be spotted by a wildcat.

I shimmied under the bottom strand of the 5 strand barbed wire fence and walked out into the neighbors pasture hoping I wouldn’t startle anyone into shooting me by wandering a pasture at 3 am.  I listened for the cows or another bray from Catalunya.  Only the sounds of insects and some cooing birds. I trudged back to bed and Zippy slipped back into the covers with me.  Alan was in the guest room sleeping with our pug/dachshund, Brucie.  Our lives molded to their needs.

I heard him again at 6:00 and put my coveralls back on, went to the fence and crawled under.  A tuft of rabbit fur from my trapper hat hung on a barb from my crossing three hours earlier.  I heard the boiling sound and felt the earth vibrate under the herd of cattle headed towards me.  I put my back against the fence in case I needed to crawl back under.  They ran in formation down to the south-west corner of the pasture and I saw Catalunya flanking them.  He didn’t seem concerned for them more just looking out for whatever was chasing them.  I couldn’t tell if they were running from him or from whatever he was hunting.  Either a coyote or whatever frightened the coyote earlier enough to run into an area inhabited by people and a donkey,  a coyote’s number one enemy.

Alan came and cut the fence and it took forever to coax him away from the new grass emerging in the pasture.  He finally came through and we fed him in his newly erected corral pen.  For the first time I closed both gates to his corral with him inside it.

All of the experts I’d spoken to said, “you have got to get him contained”.  After staying up all night trying to catch him while he’s trying to catch a coyote and the neighbor’s cows are being run about, we were desperate to get him contained.

After he ate, he circled around in his pen with both gates closed for the first time. Trying different areas in order to find an escape route.  He quickly found the weak spot and kicked down a poorly secured small section of hogwire fence.  He transformed what was frightening him in his environment (enclosure in a small pen) to what was normal in his environment, (roaming inside the twenty acre fenced area that we’d created since his unexpected arrival).

Alan went and got the wire cutters and bolts and repaired the section we had just put up and Catalunya had quickly torn through. He stalked the property again. No containment.

Later I saw him sleepily lying near the driveway after his long night out and walked towards him with a brush.  Being in the open and unprotected space with him that morning had gone well, so I foolishly thought I’d try to go brush him. He got up and came towards me as if to shew me away.  He lowered his head and made a motion as if to bite my thigh.  I hurried up the stairs and inside.  We’d have to fortify that fence and then that’s it buddy.  In you go, like it or not.

Later that evening we furnished his pen with a fluffy hay pile, some crimped oats and a big ice chest with a missing lid full of warm water. We removed all of his other water buckets so he’d have to go in for water.  Left the gate open.  He finally went in.  We closed the gates.  He bucked and faunched and reared. After a while he became more interested in his cozy digs and decided he’d have a nap in his new room of his very own.