By Yuval Azoulay   (from HAARETZ.com)
 

They have been badly beaten by abusive kids and cruel owners. Now, after having been taken away from their tormentors, they are peacefully nibbling grass on the banks of Kibbutz Geva’s fish ponds. It just goes to show: Even for tortured donkeys, there is hope.

If there is a paradise for donkeys, it is here, at the foot of Mount Gilboa, where the lupins bloom in a sea of anemones, irises, poppies and mallow.                                 

Here, at the edge of Kibbutz Geva’s organic fish ponds, a small herd of donkeys are leading the good life. It is hard to imagine that the happy animals’ winter coats hide ugly scars, that not long ago they were the victims of abuse by kids, cruel peddlers and others.

The donkeys near Geva’s 40 pools all have a sad life story. If they could talk their stories would inundate the staff at nearby Emek Psychiatric Hospital. But the Agriculture Ministry’s equine veterinarian, Dr. Tzvia Mildenberg, knows how to read the troubles of these intelligent creatures by their eyes. They tell of the sadness, backbreaking labor, beatings, burns, starvation and thirst. Of being bogged down in mud and their own excrement, of tight harnesses that rubbed deep holes in their skin as they pulled their wagons under the drivers’ whips. “Two weeks ago, in a raid in Hadera, we rescued five more donkeys that had been tormented by teenage boys. In some cases they pushed sticks and bottles into their anuses,” Mildenberg says.

Everyone gets a name .Happiness is not a given, all the more so for donkeys, animals with an image problem and bad PR. Horses are not as smart as donkeys, but they are more beautiful and therefore perceived as more noble.

The workers at Geva’s fish farms have learned to put their prejudices aside, and they are now the best friends of the donkeys, which have become an inseparable part of the selection of animals at the ponds, including nutrias and otters. Egrets and storks cross the blue skies while closer to earth, some cormorants’ efforts at fishing are rewarded once in a while when their beaks emerge from a pool holding a juicy tilapia or a nice fat mullet.

Every one of the 80 donkeys at Geva has a name. At first, the guys gave them the names of people they couldn’t stand. But as the number of donkeys grew, so did the fishermen’s affection for them, and the more recent arrivals have nice-sounding names.

From the point of view of the donkeys and the fishery staff at Geva, the arrangement is good for everyone. The donkeys make their way among the pools, keeping the weeds at bay, and in return, they are well cared for.

The arrangement works even better than the kibbutzniks, optimists by nature, thought it would. “We raise organic fish without formula, without herbicides and without antibiotics. Our problem was the weeds, which can grow several meters high around the pools. We can’t spray them because the herbicides might get into the water.

If we cut them, the fumes from the machinery’s fuel could poison the water. Since the donkeys have arrived, they became our mowers. They eat well and we’re happy. There are hardly any weeds,” says the man in charge of Geva’s fisheries, Omri Lev.

The donkeys were rescued by special operations the Agriculture Ministry has been conducting throughout the country for the past two years.

Rescues are preceded by reports from people who can’t stand to see the animals suffer; they either inform the ministry, the police or an animal-protection group.

Accompanied by police, veterinarians raid the barns suspected of abusive treatment and take the animals, both donkeys and horses, to a safe, secret location so they won’t be stolen. For the next three weeks or so, while at this “rehabilitation facility,” the animals undergo tests and treatment.

“They’re closely monitored by veterinarians and receive protein-rich food that will strengthen them. They are then given to an adoptive family,” Mildenberg explains.

No doubt about it, these animals owe their lives to the Agriculture Ministry. Kibbutz Geva has become one big adoptive family for 80 of the 250 animals that have been rescued over the past two years.

Before the donkeys became their weed-busters, Lev and his staff had even tried buffaloes – they were good mowers, but they were so heavy they broke down the fish ponds’ embankments.

The kibbutzniks are so pleased they reward their four-footed friends with treats from the dining room – vegetables, fruit and sometimes even bread and potatoes. “They’re crazy about bread,” Lev says.

He notes that the donkeys are usually quite tranquil, except when the females go into heat. “Then you see the males run after the females like in a nature film,” Lev says. Every animal has found its place in the herd, he says, as he pulls a fishnet filled with flip-flopping tilapia – after all, he also has to make a living. The main markets for Geva’s organic fish are Germany, the U.K. and Denmark.

Lev, a strong-looking, mild-mannered 38-year-old father of two, did his military service in the naval commando unit. He also dived in the Kishon. “Thank God, I get checked every year and I’m okay. Some of the other divers in the Kishon can’t say the same,” he adds, a reference to the high incidence of cancer among navy divers, alleged to have been linked to their diving in the polluted Kishon stream, near Haifa Bay.

Welcome home, Allegra

The Agriculture Ministry gives the horses it rescues to adoptive families throughout the country, after candidates are interviewed and home visits ascertain their suitability. Families must have experience raising horses, the ability to support them financially, proper stables and room for the horses to exercise.

Some 50 families have already received horses that otherwise would have died of hunger in filthy stables, or collapsed of exhaustion in some back alley in Jaffa.

Moran Pinco, an energetic 33-year-old who lives on a moshav in central Israel, will never forget the day she received her white horse, Allegra.

“She was eight months ago. I saw death in her eyes. She was only skin and bones and hardly had any coat left. She was at least 200 kilograms underweight. Now she weighs about half a ton, eats hay made of clover, which is more expensive than regular hay but is rich in protein,” Pinco says.

Allegra, who was nameless before she came to Pinco, was being starved with four other horses in the stinking stable of a moshav in the north. “The previous owners didn’t have money so they didn’t feed them. Allegra had given birth and her foal died because she didn’t have any milk,” Pinco says. “I got her a week later, hungry, gaunt and sad. I’m sure she was also beaten.”

Moran’s father, Ran Kadosh, gave Allegra her name, which means happy in Spanish. He also gave a Spanish name to Moran’s first horse – Belmundo – which they bought from a family who was evacuated from Gush Katif at a relatively low price. Another horse that came to Moran through the Agriculture Ministry project was named Rodrigo. Three-year-old Rodrigo is now undergoing training and Moran can’t wait for him to come home.

“All the nobility of horses comes from their origin in Andalusia, and therefore their names are Spanish. It fits,” Kadosh explains, elegantly fingering a thin cigarette.

“Horses by their nature are forgiving. They forget incidents in a day or two. But if someone abuses them for a long time, they will never forget. If a horse sees the person who abused him, he’ll go wild. It’s his instinct to run away. Here, the horses are protected and happy,” Kadosh says.