Our friend Christopher Smith, a very gifted Vermont artist, painted this portrait of me and my first donkey Carol nearly a decade ago, soon after I first moved to Bedlam Farm in Hebron and met the first donkey I ever knew, Carol.

Carol is the Ur-Donkey for me, she is the donkey who made me love donkeys.

She had a very common donkey story, she was 16 years old and had lived a hard donkey life, spending her days and nights outside all year round in a small fenced in corral with some scrawny trees. She got some hay in the winter, and mostly lived off of bark and grass.

She had no shelter. I came to her farm to learn about sheep herding and was drawn to Carol. She was a wreck.

She was not especially nice, she was grumpy and quite independent but she loved the apples and cheese I brought with me while I took sheep herding lessons. After awhile, she would just break through the fence when I showed up and run off the dogs and sheep and demand food. Woe to me if I didn’t have any.

The farmer didn’t believe in feeding treats to donkeys, but I did, and Carol and I got attached to each other. Carol had seen too much in her difficult life and did not care much for human affection, or for humans.

She just wanted the apples she didn’t wish to be my devoted pal. I fell in love with her, of course.

After my lessons, I moved upstate to my first farm and I bought the sheep from the farmer where we had been working. When the trailer arrived, Carol was the first animal off. The farmer, getting the last laugh, sent a note along saying since I liked her so much, I could feed her.

Carol had all kinds of medical problems, she was foundering and her teeth and hooves were a wreck. I had to give her all kinds of shots and pills, and got frostbite on two fingers and three toes chasing her around the pasture in the winter trying to give her the shots she needed.

For this, she was not grateful, she would bite me and kick me every chance she got.

She even kicked me when I rescued her after she was stuck in the pasture fence (she was trying to get out.) Carol was a fiercely independent spirit. Like many donkeys, she had learned to be wary of people.

I think she learned to tolerate me, if not to love me. I would never have taken on Simon if I had not learned to deal with Carol.

Carol was wicked smart, a true Houdini, and she would sometimes open the pasture gate, walk up the driveway and nose open the back door to the farmhouse, which would open in the wind.

Once I found her in the kitchen eating a box or two of breakfast cereal. She wouldn’t leave until I sprayed her with the fire extinguisher. You could yell at Carol all day – I sometimes did – and she would just look at me and smirk. You can’t really make a donkey do anything a donkey does not want to do.

Carol had some sweetness in her, and Willie Nelson brought it out.

Carol was always difficult and ill-tempered, but she loved listening to Willie Nelson on a boom box. Her ears would go back, her lips would twitch and she would purr like a kitten, transformed to another dimension, perhaps a dream farm. I would often go out to the barn with the boombox and sit with her awhile, give her shots and pills. As long as she could hear Willie Nelson, she would let me do everything, even brush her and stroke her neck.

I’d bring some oats to the barn and a granola bar for me, and we would chew our oats today. I loved those evenings with Carol.

One day, a woman came by who identified herself as a donkey breeder and a Jewish Donkey Mystic. This shocked me it was not something I expected to hear in my remote town in upstate New York. But she was telling the truth. She could talk to donkeys.

She said Carol suffered from an identity crisis, she had never lived with donkeys and didn’t know she was a donkey. Carol thought, she said, that she was a sheep because she had only known sheep all of her life. She was not in touch with her “donkeyness.”

A true farmer would have said, “so what, who cares?,” but I got upset and bought Fanny from this breeder, and I saw right away that she was right. Carol was stunned for about a week, and after that the two were inseparable. Carol settled down quite a bit, she now knew she was a donkey, and she still loved Willie Nelson.

Sometimes, she would let me hold her head in my hands while I talked to her. Sometimes she wouldn’t.

But even that awakening couldn’t overcome her health issues, and she suffered a stroke right in the middle of the pasture one day, and the vet and I agreed to put her down. A toothless animal hauler came to haul her away. He winched her to the back of his truck and cranked her, along with some dead cows.

Carol wasn’t the kind of donkey who gets a memorial service.

I loved Carol, and from that point on, I loved donkeys. Of course, when she died, I had to get another donkey to keep Fanny company and nourish her “donkeyness,” and so I bought Fanny. My two donkeys are among the sweetest and smartest creatures I have ever known.

They are not like Carol, they would never bite or kick me.

They adore Maria and bray wildly when she appears. They love to be talked to and petted and they practically melt at the sight of a carrot or apple. They love people, especially children, and are stars at our open houses.

Christopher Smith caught my connection with Carol as well as any photograph, and I keep the picture on the living room wall, where I can see it every day. Donkeys are the most wonderful of animals, full of spirituality and mysticism and love.

Carol brought me into this world, and into the world of donkeys I am lucky to have the painting to help me recall the feeling I had for her. It was one of the best presents I ever got.