I’m working on my book about Simon, Rocky and Red and I am researching the wondrous history of the donkeys, formerly known as asses. No animal has captured the imagination of religious figures, painters, writers, even emperors than the donkey. Jesus rode one, so did Napoleon and scores of the most famous paintings in history have tried to capture the donkey’s long partnership with man. In the Kabbalah, God warns his priests to make sure the donkey is not mistreated, as they are blessed creatures deserving of mercy and dignity.

Donkeys have lived and worked all over the world and are seen as symbols of faith, devotion and deliverance. There are fifty million donkeys estimated to still be working all over the world, but in America, they have been pushed aside by machines and largely forgotten. Few of the many hundreds of people who came to Bedlam Farm to meet Simon had ever seen a donkey. In most literature, donkeys are portrayed as partners with people on the journey through life, the journey of chance. They are humble, ungainly creatures – not nearly as glamorous as the horse or as subservient as the dog. They are perhaps the most needed and abused animals on the earth, subject to brutally difficult work in all kinds of heat and cold and tough terrain. Donkeys work until they drop.

Simon symbolizes the story of the donkey, abandoned, reborn, loyal. He is, in so many ways I am just beginning to understand, a partner, that is what it feels like.