Donkey: purchased. Fence: continues. Eggwatch: begins.

After making tons of phone calls I finally made a good donkey connection and drove to Iredell County a couple days ago and bought the donkey on sight. He is gorgeous, much classier looking than I expected. He's been "servicing" mares, unimpeded, in a pasture for a couple months - the human lady just comes to spoil him and give him treats on a regular basis - so he wasn't as incredibly friendly as some. The lady whose jennies he's been boinking called him "Jethrose" (rhymes with "dose") but I kind of like Susanlynn's idea of naming him Emilioooo after the dumbest, densest hero ever of a failed telenovela.

I thought about naming him after an ex-boyfriend for whom I suffered endlessly (in hopes of de-toxifying the name) but decided Jethrose didn't deserve that baggage.

So Jethrose is at Donkey Spa now. The vet is going to come and end his boinking career, and while he's recuperating the owner's children, 4-H devotees, are going to swarm all over him and friendly him up.

Meanwhile the fence is moving along briskly thanks to the efforts of the guys I picked up at the 7-11. They've come three times and are coming again tomorrow.

I bought a new chainsaw - this must be my fourth - and am clearing the fence line just ahead of my fencers.

And finally - a bad habit I developed when my son was sick - if I wake at 3 am sometimes I go on eBay, and sometimes I buy things I don't need. When Zed was sick, I bought tablecloths. Well, a week or so ago I went to "eggbid.com" and bid on 15 rare Java chicken eggs. Java is an American domestic breed which fell off so sharply at at one point there were only 200 Java chickens left. So I won the auction ($15 seems cheap for rare birds) and the eggs arrived today.

My friend Judy keeps chickens and she told me she had a "broody" hen - that means, the chicken suddenly decides it's time to hatch some eggs. Her broody hen had no eggs, she was just sitting in her nesting box on straw. This struck as both as pathetic, so I took five of my eggs to Judy and she stuck them under the hen. The other ten, I've just now put into the incubator. It's supposed to take 21 days so I guess they'll hatch on Erev Yom Kippur.