Donkey Diaries, April 6th 2015. We can see our house from here!

Our second entry into our diary should be actually have a double title, the second part of it being.  'almost at the finish line' as the shelter is looking pretty close to the point where the roof is put on.  So all in all we are pretty pleased with our humans and their helpers because they have been really busy building it higher.  In fact you can see how much higher if you compare the two pictures below. Look at the upright on the scaffold, or as I call it the yellow metal thing you can see it quite clearly sticking up above the top level of the shelter.

'Suns out, Guns out'. Heeeeehaaaw.

Well after a lot of huffing and puffing our humans and the people who have been helping them have managed to make the walls higher,as can be seen in the below photograph.  Now I will admit at first I was sure they hadn't done anything of the sort.  In fact I was convinced they had just cut the legs on the yellow metal thing a bit shorter.  But Dad (Mimo) tells me that the humans aren't likely to have done that as they aren't too good at getting things level what with only having two legs on which to stand which means they wobble far more than us donkeys, heeehaaaw,  so I guess the walls really are that much higher than what the previous photo shows.

 

Jonas unfortunately didn't see it through to this level as he had to leave us, Dad said something about him going back to University, so we said our goodbyes and promised to keep him updated on the shelters progress as he seemed keen to hear how it went.  Of course he wanted a photo to remember us by so Dad being a bit of a camera hog posed for a picture with him, I maintain I was too busy taking the picture hence why I am not in it.  But I know he won't forget me, courtesy of my nibbling his bottom every morning as he helped clean out my paddock of all my poop.  Well a donkey has to do what a donkey has to do which applies to both pooping and nibbling.  Heeeehaaaaw.

Thankfully two new humans arrived shortly after Jonas's departure both of whom said they were keen to help build our shelter alongside Mum. (where she finds them we don't know, but we are so happy she does or she would be still building our new house come Christmas)

 

Apparently they are from some place called New Zealand where everything is upside down.  When it is summer here it is winter over there. And they make films about little people called Hobbits and the like.  Anyway, back to the new humans, they introduced themselves as being called Phoebe and Theo and seem very nice, so we happily let them pick up our poop as they seemed not to mind, well who would?  Heeeehaaaaw.  As well as let them play at building our shelter amongst other things such as finishing a wall human mum started months and months ago with the help of some other volunteers one of which was Tracy, whom we sadly had to say goodbye too not long after Theo and Phoebe arrived.

 

 

 

It looks pretty good don't you think?

 

 

Anyhow, surprise, surprise Dad posed yet again this time with human mum in the picture as well as Tracy said she wanted one, human mum was not happy about it, she kept saying something about breaking the camera with her ugly face, but hey, sometimes a human has to do what a human doesn't want too besides I think I am getting pretty darn good at this photography game don't you and made her look at least a bit slimmer than she is in reality heeeehaaaaw?) 

But back to the comings and goings, to be honest we are not sure if we like the goings, but we do however like the comings, new people to cuddle with so for now we are letting things slide, but you never know, we might just decide we have to put our hooves down and keep one or two of the humans that come to help human mum as we donkeys have our needs and one of them is humans to look after us)

Anyhow shortly after Tracy left we moved paddocks (human mum said she had, had enough of us eating her good trees now that we had eaten all the grass off the old one) so now we are on the terraces which are great fun, not only is there lovely grass and weeds to eat but there are walls which I can jump.  Heeeehaaaaw, you should see and hear human mum panic when I do it..

After our move we then said hello to Ana.  .

 

Who it turns out is from a place called Mexico, my people do come a long way to see us don't they. Anyhow she is helping build our shelter alongside human mum as well as helped increase the size of our paddock as human mum has said we eat like horses, hummmppphh, there is no need to be insulting.  

 

Anyhow, just when we started to get excited over the shelter being just about ready for the roof to be put on, human Mum suddenly started worrying the walls were not standing up to being pushed.  Something about them moving.  So without further ado she called a halt on the roof and started to build something called a buttress.  Now I was going to point out she had already built four right from the get go, but apparently the shelter needed them every metre or so along the length of the walls.  So four more were added.  (one wall is connected by the hay shelter roof to a giant stone wall that is holding it solidly in place.) 

 

Thankfully Theo, Phoebe and Ana didn't seem to mind this hiccup, in fact they said it was a learning curve for them as much as it is for our human mum, pah, if they had asked us we could have told them how to build our shelter right, right from the start.  But humans being humans, they never ask us donkeys anything.  Their mistake.

 

 

 

Ana proved to be a great seamstress, sewing up the bags for Phoebe and Theo to fill.

 



Which were then stacked, one on top of the other to make the buttress.  Pretty solid looking thing isn't it.  Mum said if the wall moves now she gives up. I think she would be right too.
































So this is where the shelter is at the moment. One buttress completed, three more to go, unfortunately human mum ran out of bags so she had to send off for some more, which of course has meant another delay. We also had to say goodbye to Theo and Phoebe so I guess we will let it slide that human mum has fallen behind with the shelter.  

Well she is human after all.

Good job the weather has been so nice.