Monday, September 26, 2011

Joni

Well, we bit the bullet and adopted a donkey.
Since I last posted, GB and Luka spent the day visiting a couple of donkey places in Puna.  They talked about bringing home a pregnant female that they had liked.  We decided to visit another donkey rescue operation in Waimea.

So the day that Ra'am left for UCSB (sniff sniff), GB, Noam and I loaded in to our car and headed up to Waimea to meet Casey and Mark and all of their donkeys.  They had just received a lot of 15 or so wild ones.  They had 2 donkeys that they were using to train the others-- Super Boy (who Noam was smitten with) and Eeyorie.  They kept mentioning Eeyorie's Best Friend as a possible donkey for us, since she was a fairly solitary donkey and seemed pretty mellow.
They invited us to return in 2 weeks after they had had some time to work with the new arrivals.

We returned yesterday and soon after our arrival, they offered Eeyorie to us.  She was the most friendly of the donkeys-- she came right up to us at the fence.  And she is just super mellow.  Even though they are both really attached to her, they felt as though she would be a good fit for us-- easy going and very comfortable with people-- especially with the kids.
AND... they offered to bring her this am!

Like all the farms involved in the donkey rescue, they are just inundated with animals.  Super Boy has taken over training of the other donkeys because he's much faster than Eeyorie.  So  that was our gain.

We've changed her name to Joni (Mitchell).  The name suits her.


Joni, just arrived at our house, in the trailer

checking out the foliage.  See the pretty teal ribbon on her tail?

Casey shows Luka how to touch Joni
 Joni hasn't met the goats yet.  The pasture we would like to put them in together is recovering, so in the meanwhile, Joni is tied to a stake in the yard next to a hugely overgrown thing of grass.  They assure us that she could stay there for several weeks without problem.  If we need to move her, it will be easy.  She's DOCILE!

On another note, GB and Luka set up the electric fence at the tilapia pond for the ducks.  The fence is useless-- they can get right thru the holes (elecrified or not), but they are so thrilled with the large body of water, that they stay.  So far so good!