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Donkeys at Caneel Bay

Yesterday’s post dealt with how and why  the first edition of The St. John Beach Guide was banned by the St. John National Park in part for printing an illustration of non-threatening donkeys grazing on a field on St. John. This at a time when the park wanted to portrait a negative attitude about donkeys, which were proliferating to such an extent as to become  an environmental problem.

The following which appeared on the Cinnamon Bay bulletin board takes it to the evil nature of the beasts: “(they) will kick and bite without warning…. forcing their way into tents, eating campers food, travelers checks and even air line tickets…”

Andy Rutnik’s Donkey Story
The park’s opinion of donkeys was shared by at least one of my friends on St. John, the former Commissioner of Licensing and Consumer Affairs, Andy Rutnik, who was operating a nursery at that time that he told me this story:

“They’re spiteful creatures,” Andy told me. “They’re demons, devils and evil spirits. They hate us.”

And Andy went on to tell me this story:

Guavaberry Farms, Andy’s nursery, was and still is a place of beauty. And Andy loved his plants. He had this one mango tree, still small, but he had grafted several of his most favorite varieties to various branches of the same tree, so that this one tree would eventually bear four or five different mango species, one more delicious, sweet, juicy and less stringy than the next.

One day Andy’s employee, Robert, called, “Andy, come quick, There’s that donkey coming.”

Now donkeys can be very destructive to plants and they are certainly not welcome visitors, but this one in particular had caused a lot of havoc in the past, knocking over plants and biting off branches, flowers and fruits.

Andy ran to the scene, arriving too late to frighten off the donkey, who had stripped a prize plant down to the bark and then running away before Andy could get there.

The very next day Robert cried out, “Andy, he’s here again!”

Andy sped off to the nursery. There was the donkey. He had almost all of the branches of Andy’s small prized multi mango tree in his mouth. Andy yelled for the creature to get away.

The donkey stopped. He turned to Andy, his mouth full of devastated mango branches. He turned toward Andy and defiantly and forcefully spit the devastated mango branches on the ground, then he picked up his head, looked Andy right in the eye and said in perfect English, “F–k you, Andy!”

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under Life on St. John USVI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.