A Donkey Lives Next Door...

A Donkey Lives Next Door...

One summer evening several years ago, my husband and I sat outside in our Muskoka chairs enjoying a nice glass of local wine. This is one of the perks of living down the road from several fantastic Niagara wineries.  Suddenly the most horrific sound split the air! It was like a goose being strangled, gasping for its last breath in high-pitched, squeaky echoes over and over again. Sheer torture and then...complete silence.

Now our property borders on a little thicket and is surrounded by vineyards and several hobby farms with chickens, goats and sheep. Coyotes are a common sighting and their nighttime howls have become a welcome and soothing sound. So we just chalked this interruption up to the sounds of nature that surround us.

But these strangled eruptions were not to be a one-time occurrence. A pattern seemed to be forming.  Ear-splitting cries for about two minutes each morning, making a repeat performance for about the same amount of time every evening. After a few days or so, we did some exploring on our own. What was the discovery? A small fenced pasture housing a few...donkeys? Now these are not your common Happy Rolph's petting farm donkeys found by the canal. No, these animals were dove-grey, horse-like creatures, gentle giants with long eye-lashes and silky coats.They were not braying or making a traditional "hee haw" sound that we were familiar with from our childhood books and programs. The sound -aka goose being strangled -  was a call unlike any we had every heard before.

But why the gasping, horrifying, death-like sounds in the morning and evening? The answer was simple: feeding time.

Now this story may seem like a deterrent to some of you considering a move to the country. It's not meant to be that, but more of a lesson to do your research and conduct your due diligence as to what surrounds any potential property you are considering purchasing. Those moving from the GTA expecting to enjoy the serenity of a weekend home in Niagara-on-the-Lake may be surprised by the sounds of tractors rumbling by your home at seven in the morning, whether it's the weekend or not. The occasional horse and rider might clip-clop past you, bestowing a friendly wave as they trot on by and leave a present in front of your driveway without a second thought about who is going to clean-up the call of nature left behind. Kids on ATVs and dirt bikes might rev through the vineyards at death-defying speeds and give you a heart attack just watching them. But you get used to it. As to that high-pitched sound of a goose being strangled from many years ago? Those cries have muted to becoming a melody as soft and soothing as the coo of a mourning dove at dusk.

Sometimes our feeding time, aka dining alfresco all summer long, coincides with the donkey's feeding time. It is hard not to laugh at the expression on our dinner guests' faces whenever they hear the unexpected obnoxious cries piercing the air. I should note that there is never an unpleasant smell of manure from these donkeys that makes our dining experience negative. The farmer who owns them seems to be diligent about their cleanliness and they are loved animals. We've had close neighbours in the past that have made a lot more noise than these Equus genus. You can't always know what your neighbours are going to be like until after you move in, but we prefer the farm ones to the human ones any day...

Lolita Hale