Ears looking at you!

Friends who live close by have fostered a pair of donkeys for a number of years and recently I heard that one had died. Today I went to meet the replacement, supplied by The Donkey Sanctuary, the charity that arranges and supervises these placements. (Donkeys are always fostered in pairs since they are sociable animals and do not do well alone.)

I'd been told that the sanctuary has had an outbreak of lice and this donkey had been so badly affected that it had been shaved. Sure enough, it was sporting a No. 1 cut and its coat looked and felt like a short-pile carpet, hence the smart jacket it was wearing for warmth. It was very friendly and took an especial interest in Casey who affected an air of nonchalance.

I'd love to foster a pair of donkeys myself but the requirements for keeping them are very specific and dauntingly expensive (fencing, stabling and so on). These two have luxury accommodation and the run of a beautiful estate. Their lifestyle rivals the most superior human retirement home, as was evidenced by Guinea Pig Zero just the other day.

On the way home I wondered how you would go about shaving a donkey and then I remembered one of the very few autobiographical pieces my father wrote. Nothing to do with donkeys but so good I can't resist sharing it. It happened when he was living with just his father in Munich, Germany, early in the 20th century when he was about 10 (I was a child of his latter years.) His father went away leaving his son in the care of a hired nursemaid who was entrusted with a sum of money to provide meals. But she spent the cash on drink and disappeared, leaving my father to run wild. This was no hardship for him since he was lively and mischievous boy who reveled in the freedom. (He had a toy archery set and had managed to get the blunt arrow tips replaced with sharp points. He also acquired a precocious expertise in distinguishing the different varieties of German beer - people would bet on him to make the correct identification.)

When his father returned home several weeks later he threw a coin to the street urchin he saw hanging around outside the house. "Don't you know me Papa?" said his son. The boy, my father, was hauled inside, stripped and placed in the centre of a bedsheet spread on the floor for his louse-ridden head to be shaved.

Which, I wonder, would be the bigger shaving challenge: ass or urchin?