A Fad Ass In France
According to this IHT article, it's the latest thing :
"Forget the dog," brayed a recent issue of the French weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. "Buy a donkey!"This was a year when the donkey was feted in France with its own national postage stamp. It also is glorified in a new glossy trade magazine, The Donkey, an ad-rich journal for smitten masters with pull-out posters and testimonials like this: "Martine is an excellent guard, better than our dog Syska. When someone comes to our porch she lets out a bray."
In the south of France, nutrient-rich donkey milk is being churned into lavender soaps and Ozoane face creams. Parisians are renting donkeys by the day to explore the Pyrenees and Provence.
This new appreciation appears to be spreading slowly to other countries where donkeys were long ago abandoned in rural areas for what seemed at the time to be more efficient tractors and cargo trucks.
Earlier this month, the Italian town of Treviso, near Venice, started outsourcing the work of tractor mowers to six donkeys. The aim is to reduce the town's annual roadside grass-cutting costs of €100,000, or $135,000.