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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!”

Banned Beach Guide
As discussed in our previous post, the first edition of The St. John Beach Guide was banned by the National Park on St. John. The reason for the banning was that someone in power at the St. John National Park found fault with two illustrations in the book.

(note subsequent editions of the St. John Beach Guide have not suffered the same fate, and the latest one can be found for sale at the National Park Visitors Center in Cruz Bay.)

St. John Beach Guide - First Edition

St. John Beach Guide - Second Edition

St. John Beach Guide -Third and Latest Edition

Promotion of Nudity

Promoting Nudity

The first one was the drawing of a young lady sunbathing on the beach. She had apparently taken off the top of her bikini and as she raises (back turned) from her beach blanket, she sees a pelican flying off with the top half of her swimsuit.

Possibly, because nudity at Salomon had been an recent issue, someone took a hard line and found the whimsical illustration to be “promoting nudity.”

Donkey with a Positive Image

The Offending Donkeys
The other offending illustration is of two donkeys in a field and to understand how this benign picture could be problematic we will need to provide some background information.

At the time of the writing of the St. John Beach Guide first edition (1994), the National Park was taking an aggressive stand about the many donkeys that were roaming about St. John. The park ‘s position was that Donkeys were a non-native species and their proliferation in the wild would be destructive to the environment and dangerous to humans.

Others  took the position that donkeys have been around for a long time, that they are cute and had formed part of the cultural landscape of St. John, pointing to how often tourists take their pictures and express such fondness for the creatures.

When there was talk about the “evil park” reducing the numbers of donkeys by shooting them, “donkey lovers” expressed an emphatic opposing view.

A war of letters to the editors and coconut telegraph messages over the donkey issue began to be commonplace.

Bad Donkeys
As an example of “Donkey Bad Press, the folowing was posted on the bulletin board at the Cinnamon Bay Campground:

“Donkeys”
“Many visitors call them cute. Others refer to them as a curiosity. By the end of their stay some visitors have vowed never to return because of them. As charming as they may seem and as approachable as they are, the donkeys, which roam Cinnamon Bay Campground, are a nuisance and a safety hazard. At certain times of the year donkeys become very aggressive and will kick and bite without warning. Other problems include forcing their way into tents, eating campers food, travelers checks and even air line tickets, rummaging through trash cans causing sanitary problems and unsightly messes and damaging campground property….”

The St. John Beach Guide Takes the Heat
So into the mix out comes The St. John Beach Guide and instead of an image of snarling donkey holding up tourists on the side of the road demanding food, money and airline tickets, we have those innocuous looking animals minding their own business without revealing a clue as to the evil that possibly lurks deep in their hearts.

Was Gerald Singer making a statement about Donkeys?

For the record, I honestly never thought about the implications of the illustrations, believing them to have no political implications whatsoever.

Newspaper Article written about The St. John Beach Guide controversy