The discontented Donkey

Once upon a time there was a donkey; he really was a donkey, because he was always quite sure that whatever was just out of reach must be better than what lay right under his nose. If anyone offered him a piece of sugar, he would snuffle it over disdainfully and wish it had been an apple; if anyone bought him and apple he was sure a carrot would have been more to his taste; if by chance a carrot came his way he got no pleasure from eating it because he wanted sugar. There was no doubt about it – he was a donkey.

One day he was put out to graze in a particularly comfortable paddock. There was a knobby fence on which he could rub, a creek in case he felt thirsty, a tree to give shade, and a crop of tender young grass. What more could any reasonable animal want? But the donkey was not reasonable; he glanced around the paddock, walked to the far corner, and stood looking over the fence.

“I can’t think why they didn’t put me into the next paddock,” he grumbled; “the grass over their looks twice as tasty as this wretched stuff they expect me to eat.”

There was a Friesian cow in the paddock with the donkey. “Make the best of what you have, that’s my motto,” she said. “You’ll never grow fat on grass that is out of reach.”

The donkey twitched his tail and stretched over the fence in the hope that he might snatch a mouthful.

               “You’ll grow into a giraffe if you are not careful,” said the cow.

But the donkey took no notice of her advice and stretched out so far that some of the grass tickled his nose and made him sneeze; he sneezed so hard that the fence-rail broke and there he was in the other paddock. He kicked up his heels in delight and began to gallop around and around.

               “You’ll get into trouble,” said the cow; you’d better come back.”

               “Not I!” Brayed the donkey, and when he had raced himself out of breath, he began to look about for the juiciest patch so that he could satisfy his hunger. But the grass did not look half as delicious as it had done when seen from the other side of the fence. He snuffled here, and snuffled there, till at last he came to the wall that separated the paddock from the grassy lane.

               “Just look at all those thistles over there!” he brayed. “Who would eat grass when he might have thistles? I wish I had been put out to graze in the lane.”

The longer he looked at the thistles the finer they seemed to be. He tried to jump the wall, but it was too high; he tried to kick a hole in it, but it was too well built; and he wandered up and down, up and down, looking for a gap.

               “Here am I nearly dying of starvation, and all those delicious thistles going to waste!” he sighed.

As it happened there was a little gap in the wall, just under a bush, and presently he found it. With a hee-haw of delight, he wriggled through. There were thistles everywhere – big ones and little ones, bushy ones and weedy ones, white ones, and purple ones – never before were there so many thistles seen growing together. The donkey turned round and round trying to decide where he should begin. He was just going  to take his first bite when he thought he saw a particularly fine thistle a little way ahead; but when he opened his mouth to snap of its top he caught sight of another that looked finer still, and that one was not so good as the next, and the next did not look nearly as prickly as its neighbour, and so it went all the way down the lane.

               “I never saw such a poor crop of thistles,” he grumbled; “not one of them worth eating! And he jumped down the bank and walked along the ruts in the lane.

It was a twisting turning sort of lane, with nettles in the ditches. The donkey looked at the nettles in the right-hand ditch, and then he looked at the nettles in the left-hand ditch.

               “They might be worse,” said he, “but there are sure to be better ones round the corner – there always are.”

So, he trotted around the first corner, and around the second, and around the third. “When I do find a nettle worth eating, what a meal I shall have, to be sure!” he thought.

But just as he found a nettle to his fancy, he caught sight of a wisp of straw dangling above his head; he looked up and there was a delicious mouthful of straw caught in the hedge just out of reach.

He pranced about on his hind legs, but he could not quite make himself tall enough. Then he tried jumping, but that was no use, and at last he tried resting his forefeet on the hedge. No one but a donkey would have thought of doing that. The hedge broke under his weight, and there he stuck, kicking and braying, with his head looking into a paddock and his tail still in the lane.

At first, he tried struggling backwards. Then he changed his mind and tried to struggle forwards through into the paddock.

“I never saw such tender-looking grass,” he thought, “and there’s a knobby fence to rub up against, and a creek if I feel thirsty, and a tree to give a little when the sun is hot. If I had been put to graze in a paddock like this, I should not have had to wander about all day looking for something to eat.”

There was a Friesian cow in the paddock, and she came to see what all the noise in the hedge could mean.

“Hello!” she said, “Had a good time?”

“Do I look as though I have had a good time?” asked the donkey crossly. “I only wish I was down there with you – I never saw a place that would suit me better!”

               “Then why did you go away?” asked the cow. “This is where you were this morning.”

               “What?” gasped the donkey. He was so astonished that he fell out of the hedge and rolled into the paddock. He scrambled to his feet and stood with his head down, looking very much ashamed of himself.