Lonesome donkey ain’t so ‘Lonesome’: A mystery solved
Chicago Tribune
The video from a chemical attack had horrified viewers worldwide, but the war in Syria has reliably delivered many other atrocities for six years. This reign or even rain of death, though, was enough to provoke a new U.S. president.
No drawing red lines, no waiting until they’re crossed to painstakingly decide whether to fulfill a threat. With dozens of Tomahawk missiles, Donald Trump has disrupted the world’s long, inconclusive debate over what, if anything, to do about Bashar al-Assad.
This attack won’t dislodge Assad or help the all but defeated rebel forces take control of the fractured country. But if it diminishes his air power, it also could reduce his ability to poison, crush and dismember his own people.
To an important extent, though, this attack is about more than Assad and questions of how to deal with a vicious despot. It’s about President Donald Trump. On a geopolitical plane, it tells Vladimir Putin that he isn’t the only president who’ll take risks in Syria.
The world’s rulers and diplomats aren’t accustomed to that sort of unilateral gambit from Washington. If Trump wanted to assert that he isn’t his predecessor — much as Barack Obama found ways to prove he wasn’t beholden to the style of George W. Bush — firing Tomahawks at a Russian ally’s air assets will make the distinction. Whatever the back-channel advance alerts to world capitals, Trump didn’t publicly signal to his adversaries that he would take military action on such-and-such schedule. Thursday was rife with rumors of an impending attack. But Assad likely was as surprised as the rest of us by the first missile’s impact.
On Wednesday, Trump had reacted angrily to the gassing of Syrians, including children and babies. He acknowledged that Assad crossed “many, many lines” and suggested that there would be repercussions. His administration carried forward that threat on Thursday. If Trump had done nothing but fume, the president at some point would have looked wobbly. Powerless.
In this case, of course, there is unfortunate history. In 2012, President Barack Obama declared his red line in the sand to Assad, but he didn’t follow through when Assad’s regime killed some 1,400 people in a chemical weapons assault on Damascus. That brought U.S. credibility into question.
Trump likely made the calculation that if the Syrian government launched another despicable chemical attack on its own people, he was going to make an issue of it — and would have to follow through with a proportional punishment. Otherwise, Assad and others of his ilk would figure chemical warfare is a useful tool. But what happens next? Will Assad take the hint and stop the use of chemical weapons banned throughout the world? Or will he, backed by Putin, again deploy his air force to bomb civilians? The conflict escalates from here or — not.
Pentagon planners famously war-game such scenarios. But the wily Assad is still in power six years after Obama famously said he “must go.” He’s withstood years of conflict and slipped the grasp of U.N. inspectors tasked with making sure he disposed of all of his chemical weapons.
By continuing to use them, he’s mocked those who believed he had surrendered them.
No one, not Americans or any allies, knew how an untested commander in chief with a history of shooting from the lip would react to his first international crisis. He could have let his State Department deplore this with words and kept missiles at bay. He didn’t.
Now adversaries and allies will have to recalculate.
The mystery is solved. In last week’s column I related a strange tale of a mysterious donkey that brays at sunset each day.
It was mysterious because my friends Connie and Stacy live on Canard Road (off Kingston Highway) and every evening they hear a donkey braying forlornly, but they had never seen the donkey. They knew it didn’t live on Canard Road and guessed that the braying was coming across Dykes Creek from Sproull Road.
My friend Connie (being in no way an animal expert) swore up and down that the donkey was braying because HE (she also knew it was a male) was lonely.
And so, in my column, I named the donkey Lonesome and I suggested that each day, as the sun begins to set, he stands in his pasture and brays for a companion with whom to pass the long, cold night.
The column ran last week and immediately I began getting calls and emails from readers trying to help solve the mystery.
First of all, I should tell you that Connie and Stacy (the originators of the mystery) took it upon themselves to launch a fact-finding mission in which they began snooping around the properties where they guessed Lonesome might live.
They finally came to the conclusion that the donkey did in fact live on Sproull Road, but that it was not, in fact, lonesome. He had other animals around him including a horse. They even sent me a photo of the donkey and the horse but because of the angle the photo was taken, they couldn’t determine if it was a male or not.
Now, how they came by this photo is another story all together. I’m not going sit here and tell you that they illegally trespassed on private property for the purposes of their investigation. But I will say that I don’t believe the photo they sent could have been taken from the road.
Stacy’s husband would be mortified if he knew his bride was snooping around the woods on other people’s property. Connie’s husband would expect no less from her.
Anyhow, so that was their best estimation. The donkey they photographed on Sproull Road was PROBABLY the one they’d been hearing. But other readers contacted me as well.
One reader emailed: “I’m pretty sure they’re hearing the donkeys that live next door to my parents off of Shoals Ferry Road. There are two donkeys together. The neighborhood has a fair number of dogs who have suffered many coyote attacks until these two donkeys took up residence there. There is also a donkey on the left of Sproull Road just after Acorn Road. This one shares a pasture with a variety of barn animals, including a pig, pony, rooster and a calf. However, this one would be a good deal further from Dykes Creek.”
Yet another reader sent this message: “While there is a lone donkey that resides on Sproull there is also a pair that live on Shoals Ferry (same area), the pair has a daily dawn and dusk routine of braying, last a minute or so. No idea to the reason for the daily hee-haw but I do know the source.”
I even got photos sent to me. Chris Shelly sent me photos of the very same donkey that Stacy and Connie photographed on Sproull Road. That seems to be the very same donkey mentioned previously that lives in a pasture with other animals including a pony.
I then got an email from a reader who seemed very sure that the donkey in question belonged to the Mitchells. The reader even sent a photo. It was the very same donkey that Chris Shelly had photographed and the same one the fearless adventurers Connie and Stacy had photographed.
It seemed all these sources were pointing to one donkey. But I still couldn’t be sure until I received an email from the Mitchells themselves saying theirs was, in fact, Loneseome the Donkey. Turns out Lonesome ain’t so lonesome. SHE is a happy little donkey living in a pasture with a Shetland pony and some pot-bellied pigs. Cruiz Mitchell says her name is Molly and she’s around 3 years old.
He can’t explain the braying, saying Molly will bray randomly throughout the day, but they did used to have a male that brayed religiously at sunset.
The Mitchells’ property is on the corner of Sproull Road and Acorn Road.
Cruiz and his wife Chelsea own a small trucking business — Cruiz Mitchell Trucking — and he said Molly has become sort of a mascot, being very popular with employees and their families as well as anyone who visits the property.
But she’s not a working donkey, per se. The Mitchells have three kids who love animals, so Molly spends her days being a beloved family pet.
The mystery is solved. Connie was wrong about everything.
I can’t wait to get started on my next Floyd County animal mystery. SEVERO AVILA Contributed photo
Molly the donkey is “Lonesome” no more. She belongs to Cruiz and Chelsea Mitchell. Jim Powell of Young Harris
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