A donkey: ‘Better to be born a limpet in the sea than a load bearing donkey’ | Helen Sullivan

Donkeys can grow so sick from mourning the loss of a companion that they die

When a donkey brays it is as though every rusted gate nearby is opening and closing at once; as though the iron seesaws and swings and roundabouts in one hundred abandoned playgrounds have begun to move by themselves: squeaking, creaking, screeching.

“Better to be born a limpet in the sea than a load-bearing donkey,” they say in Sicily. But the first load I ever heard of a donkey bearing was rather grand: Christ himself, riding a beast of burden into Jerusalem. People grabbed their cloaks, cut branches from palm trees “and strawed them in the way” for the donkeys to walk on. “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”

Continue reading...

source https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2021/apr/14/a-donkey-better-to-be-born-a-limpet-in-the-sea-than-a-load-bearing-donkey

No comments:

Post a Comment

Featured post

Ethiopia’s controversial quest for the sea

https://ift.tt/4t29xJd Ethiopia is famously landlocked. That’s why the ambitious Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed has long harbored visi...