PRATIE PLACE

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Jethro's unexpected delight....

Hannah and the Urban Caballero arrived at 10 pm and that set off Jethro the Donkey's "What's Going On Here?" bray, which actually sounds like the "Feed Me Now" bray and the "How Come the Chickens Are Getting Corn And I Am Not?" bray. They are all Middle C (out) Squeak (in) Middle C (out) Squeak (in) though sometimes, depending on the emotional tenor of the monologue, there are a few preliminary or terminating Squeaks unaccompanied by Middle C.

My usual practice is to ignore all nocturnal monologues and hope there will not grow to be more of them, since the neighbors are surprisingly tolerant but there may be a limit.

(Hannah's suggestion when I first fretted about nocturnal monologues: "You need to obtain buy-in - make sure the neighbors meet him and see how cute he is." More on the successful neighborhood buy-in operation later.)

But this time we went down to see him. He poked his head over the fence - you never know when a visitor might have half an apple in some hidden pocket - and got many scratches and pats. He was on very best behavior, like a toddler who has unexpectedly been allowed to come downstairs in jammies long after bedtime.

They were most taken with my pet - "He's so cute! He's so big! His ears are so soft!"

In sum, I obtained buy-in from my houseguests, which is important, because Jethro will recommence his monologues at 5:15 am.

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1 Comments:

At 12:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you ever heard the expression "donkey years"? The only time I ever heard it used was by a Tongan in Tonga. We were living in Tonga at the time as that was where my wife's employer had assigned her to work. She said something to her local counterpart, intimating that her contract had not yet been extended and that it could not be presumed that it would be. Her Tongan counterpart's reply was "Oh, you'll be here for donkey years." A year later she was moved a step up the ladder and reassigned to a post in Fiji, where we spent the next three years, before another reassignment to the Philippines, seven years ago. I've never heard Filipinos use the expression, but I suspect it might be applicable.

 

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