1st of January 2012 – bad start of the new year

Unfortunately the new year had a bad start. This morning we received a call about an injured jennet that had been hit by a car in the new year’s night. After the accident the

wounded  jennet had still managed to drag herself along for about 300 meters, back to the place where she used to be many times during the day: a pile of sand next to a house under construction. Early morning the owner of this house, at the Kaya Pauwnee in Hato, noticed the injured jennet was lying over there. Of course as soon as we received the report we set off to help this jennet. To our grief this beautiful and else wise perfectly healthy jennet had a broken back because of the car hit and we could only

help her by calling the vet to release her from suffering. Poor donkey lady, such a sad start of the new year…

19th of January 2012 – little foal missing

Yesterday evening, when it was almost dark, a gentleman reported himself at the entrance of our sanctuary. He told us that he noticed a little foal and its mum close to his home in the area of Den Statie. He thought the foal might be ill as its bottom and its hind-legs were very dirty. We thanked him for reporting this to us and explained to him that donkey babies often suffer from harmless diarrhoea when they are getting teeth, just human babies. Probably that would be the case with this little donkey as well. But of course we did not want to take any chances. So we made an appointment with this gentlemen to come over to see if the foal was doing alright first thing next morning, when there would be daylight again. So already at 7 am Marina, Marion and Mila were at the sight. They immediately noticed the donkey mum, as it was easy to recognise her by her swollen udder full of milk. Strangely enough her foal was nowhere to be seen. And it was clear the donkey mum was desperately looking and calling for her baby. We searched everywhere for the little foal, but we could not find it. The foal could not be dead, as in that case the donkey mum would still be standing next to her dead child to mourn. After an hour searching we had to go back to the sanctuary to feed the donkeys over there. But immediately after we went back to the scene to search for the foal again, this time reinforced with Genaro. The donkey mum was still wandering around, calling for her baby and suffering pain from her badly swollen udder. To our despair we did not find her foal, although we thoroughly searched all area. A donkey mum will never leave her child. So if the foal would have been stuck somewhere, its mum would have been waiting for it close by. And even if her child would have died, she would stand next to the dead body to mourn for at least a day. So we assume that, as tragically happens often on Bonaire, the foal has been stolen away from its mum by people that took it home. Of course this is traumatic for both donkey mum and foal. Moreover the donkey mother suffers painful stagnation in her udder and most of the times the foal gets mortally ill as a result of lacking essential nutrients. Poor donkey mum, poor foal… Too bad we can only wait and see if there might be any reports about the missing foal.

28th of January 2012 – another donkey dies by a car hit

Last night around midnight we were called by the police. They asked us to come over to Kaya Korona, where a donkey was hit by a car close to the church. Of course Marina imme-

diately went out of bed and set off to help the injured donkey. Indeed she found the donkey close to the church, right in front of a bar where a lot of people were still outside. The car that hit the donkey was nowhere to be found. Possibly the driver did not care about the wounded donkey or he fled away from the scene because he was driving drunken. Unfortunately the donkey was badly injured. The poor animal had broken several legs and suffered from severe internal bleedings. Nevertheless he still tried to stand up in vain to flee away from the busy spot he was lying at.

Marina had no other choice but calling the vet out of his bed as well and ask him to come over to release the donkey from suffering. When that was done, the people at the bar told Marina to cover the dead donkey, as it would not be a nice sight for the people going to church the next morning. However Marina did not have anything with her to cover the dead donkey with and moreover she decided it would be good that the people of Bonaire do see this disaster. After all for many people Bonaire is like paradise. But for the donkeys that live on the streets Bonaire is like hell. Over and over again the donkeys are victims of speeding cars and the authorities still not offer any help to save them from the streets and give them shelter in our sanctuary.