JOIN USOperation Donkey brings Smoke to US
Smoke the Donkey, who became a friend and mascot to a group of US Marines living in Iraq’s Anbar Province nearly three years ago, arrived in New York this week aboard a cargo jet from Turkey.
After being quarantined for two days he was released on Saturday and began a road trip to Omaha, where he is destined to become a therapy animal.
The chest-high donkey’s story begins in the summer of 2008, when he wandered in to Camp Taqaddum west of Fallujah, a former Iraqi air base being used by Marines.
The smoke-coloured donkey, which once snatched and ate a cigarette from a careless Marine, soon became such a part of the unit that he received his own care packages and cards. Marines took care of him until 2009 when they left the area, but they turned Smoke over to a sheik who promised to care for him. But one of the Marines, retired Col John Folsom, couldn’t forget Smoke.
Folsom used to walk Smoke daily and had formed a bond with the animal. It didn’t seem right that Smoke was left behind, he said in a telephone interview on Saturday. Folsom, the founder of a support group for military families, Wounded Warriors Family Support, decided to see if Smoke could be brought to the United States to serve as a therapy animal.
Getting Smoke back proved more difficult than Folsom realised. At first, the sheik demanded $30,000 for the famous donkey, a demand that was later dropped. Then, there was the bureaucracy of getting Smoke nearly 7,000 miles around the world: blood tests, health certifications and forms from customs, agriculture and airline officials.
The donkey’s journey has provided laughter — and head scratching — along the way. “People just couldn’t believe we were going to these great lengths to help a donkey because donkeys in that part of the world are so low down on the totem pole,” said the society’s Terri Crisp, who negotiated the donkey’s passage from Iraq to the United States. “Donkeys are not viewed as a companion animal. They’re viewed as a work animal.”
“Why do we spend billions of dollars of pet food in this country? Why do we do that?” Folsom said. “We love our animals. That’s why.”
Folsom saw the donkey for the first time in years on Saturday when he arrived in New York to transport him to his new home in Omaha. Folsom said Smoke is already getting used to seeing big, green trees instead of desert.
“He’s an American donkey now,” Folsom said.