A friend reminded me of a shared admiration for donkeys. Equus africanus asinus is an ancestor of the African wild ass and has served as a companion and worker for man (and woman) through the ages.
My father was a keeper and fan of grander members of the equidae family. His hunter horses and show jumpers were temperamental skittish beasts. I admired their beauty but deemed them potentially lethal. It didn't help that I was allergic to horse hair . A nascent career as a show jumper on the gymkhana circuit was short lived .
Where a horse is nervy a donkey is calm and stoical. Donkeys have served Homo sapiens well and bore Jesus into Jerusalem. In Bresson's film Au Hazard Balthazar the titular donkey is treated abominably by various owners and bears a fate not unlike that of Christ.I was going to refer to the Spanish practice of throwing donkeys from a church steeple but the story is apocryphal . Before researching the tale I had taken it for fact and in keeping with religious celebration. Organised religion does not set a high bar on cruelty to animals.
I will end with a hymn of praise to one Edward Murphy (or Eddie Murphy to his friends and viewers). His comic turn as donkey in the Shrek films ennobled the perception of Equus africanus asinus . The donkey is cast as the noble steed and loyal underdog when compared with the flimsy patrician charm of the King's stallion.
Viva donkey.
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