I’m excited, very very excited! It’s Christmas Eve, and me, Dottie & Daisy are waiting eagerly for Father Christmas and the reindeer to appear. We keep looking up to the skies because Dottie insists she can hear sleigh bells, but no sign yet. Now I know that little children are excited to see Father Christmas, but for us donkeys it’s the reindeer we are looking out for! Prancer & Dancer, Comet & Cupid, Donner & Blitzen, Vixen, Dasher and of course, Rudolph! Superstars! We are megafans!!
We have had a lot of excitement recently. First someone left the gate unlocked to the food cupboard in the donkey barn, so we were able to push it open, and came face to face with the 3 food bins. One is for the goats, one is for the ducks and one is for us donkeys. But which was which, they all look the same! Luckily, Dottie came to the rescue, sniffed out the correct bin and was able to push the lid off using her nose! She’s very clever when food is involved!! When Kerry turned up in the morning to open the gate to the orchard she caught us all with our noses in the bin of donkey nuts, filling our faces. There was no way we could explain our way out of that situation! Whoops! Hee Haw!!
Next came the really cold white stuff, which I’d not seen before, but Daisy said was called snow. WOW! That was really wild! A little bit slippy, but it did mean we got some extra hay in the morning and got to check out all the mystery footprints that the local animals had made in the field overnight. That lasted for a few days, then it suddenly went warm and started raining again. Bleh, I think I prefer snow to the rain!
And now it’s almost reindeer time. Still no sign of them, but we have seen an owl, 2 mice and a cat!
It’s late now, we have come out of the barn, our ears are pricked, we can all hear the tinkle of bells, our noses are twitching as we can smell magic in the air.
LOOK! Look up there! There they are, all 9 of them flying high in the sky. Rudolph out in front and his nose really does glow red! It’s so beautiful. Look at Dasher in front of Father Christmas, leading the team, he’s so very cool!
Off they fly, over the glamping pods, away to the houses up the road, leaving a trail of stardust over the rooftops as they go. We could hear as they flew away laughter from Father Christmas on the air and a blessing to us all… “Ho Ho Ho, Happy Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!”
Possibly the best night ever!!
Merry Christmas everyone, from the creatures at Apple Orchard. xx
