Donkey Hair

Whenever I brush the donkeys, I clean the brush by tapping it on the fence post.

This time of year there’s lots of donkey hair all over the farm.  They will  continue to shed until it’s almost time for them to grow their hair back again.

This morning when I went out to take care of the animals, I saw dew on the strands of donkey hair still on the fence post from the last brushing.

I went back to the house to get my camera.

In my mind I played with the scale of the dewy donkey hair, picturing it as a thirty foot tall sculpture, in a sculpture park.    Something people could walk through and around.  I wondered what I would make the sculpture from, knowing only that it would have to be very thin and very strong.  I’m still thinking about what the dew drop would be made from…

The hair that I, and now Braeden, brush from the donkeys eventually blows away on the wind, gets washed away in the rain,  or gets picked up by birds to use in their nests.

I’ve seen many nests around the farm that have donkey hair in them.   I even have this little one  above, that I  keep on the altar in my studio.

Lulu has a thicker coat that Fanny and it takes her longer to shed her hair each summer. Both donkeys still have some side-burns, but most of the winter hair is gone from the faces.  Soon their bangs will be gone too.

The hair under their bellies it the last to go.

Soon Fanny will be sleek like a seal and sometime after that, Lulu will be too.  Then Braeden and I will use a softer brush.

Not to comb out the loose hair, but to help keep the donkeys clean and because they like the way it feels as much as I like brushing them.

Grooming is another way to connect with the donkeys.

The sheep often groom each other, eating the hay out of each other’s wool.  And, when they  think I’m not looking, I’ve seen Fanny and Lulu scratching each other on the neck with their teeth.  One head twisted around the other, both getting scratch and being scratched at the same time.