Animal rescue offers a wondrous opportunity for self-awareness, mercy, and a respect for life that is not human. It also offers the opportunity for anger, self-righteousness, hostility and hatred.

For me, the experience of taking Simon has prompted bits and pieces of all of those things, and I am working to keep perspective and understand my own ideas of ethical animal care. I like Thomas Aquinas’s idea that we need to be good to animals so that we can also learn to be good to humans. Our care of animals defines our own humanity.

Simon is not in any obvious danger of dying, although he was. He has some serious leg and hoof issues, but unless something else surfaces, he should have 20 or 30 years ahead of him. He is getting good care, but we are not spending thousands of dollars on him, nor will we do that, or have his heart or internal organs tested or scanned. There will not be any EKG’s or cardiologists here.  I have, in fact, stopped referring to him as a rescued animal, but as an adopted one.  I do this for him. I don’t believe it does animals any good to tag them as abused or piteous. It just does us good. They don’t need or use labels.

Simon’s removal from the farm has prompted all sorts of emotions in me, all kinds of openings and stirrings and I think I do understand myself better. Many people write messages telling me of Simon’s gratitude and appreciation, his happiness at the farm, his love of me and Maria, of his heroism and ours. Some see it as a Disney story, the sweet and battered donkey finding his good place. There is something to that. It has been jarring, but not all that hard. I’m not nearly in the hero realm yet, and neither is he.

I think Simon’s impact on me is much more interesting than that, and much more animalistic, not human. I don’t think Simon has any consciousness whatsoever of his suffering. Nor would he feel human emotions such as anger, gratitude or relief. He is eating regularly and is getting more secure in the world. Enough people have been by to bring him food and cookies and carrots and apples that he is beginning to associate humans with good things.

Surely animal instincts remember acts of violence and danger but Simon seems driven almost entirely by a need for food and attention, in that order. I brought him apples, carrots or cookies every time I saw him, and when he sees me, he brays loudly (some might say joyously). Animals love who feeds them, and bond closely with that person or people. It’s how the domesticated animals have survived. Simon clearly needs attention. He loves to be brushed, touched, massaged, and combed. I believe his instincts can sense my moods, and his intuition enables him to read my intentions. He is very, very smart, perhaps the smartest animal on the farm now. He opens latches, noses doors, lifts the tops off food bins. He not only watches me, he pays attention to me.

I am always uncomfortable with exploiting animals so that we can further dislike, batter and attack humans. That defiles the point and nature of animals, who never act out of malice or spite. Those are among the many human emotions they do not grasp or share. Animals serve and inspire us and in our disconnected and  fragmented world, they have a lot to teach us about tolerance and acceptance.

I am planning on talking to the farmer who owned him soon. I do not hate this man or feel anger towards him (I surely have felt anger when I look at Simon). I suspect he has enormous and unrelenting trouble to have his soul so battered and I want to know what he has to say. I will hold my judgment, not of what he did, but who he is. I am not in favor of hating people.  I do not subscribe to the many angry, hostile and self-righteous feelings, movements and philosophies of parts of the animal world and rescue culture. It’s just not who I want to be.

I think Simon is content here, and if somebody else took him and treated him well, he would be content there. It’s the way of animals. I also believe there is a mystical quality to animals like animals who have approached the abyss. We don’t have words for it, only feelings. I have photos that show it, but no language to explain or describe it. I will surely try. I feel he is communicating something to me.  He has changed me. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t accept the romantic and emotional notions of people about what it is.  We don’t have the language, instincts or emotions to speak to animals or understand what they are saying and thinking and feeling. It is arrogant for me to think that I know what is in Simon’s mind.

But I’ll try and figure it out and share the experience.