You had no intention of standing on all four legs and simply waiting for animal control personnel to seize you. With a flick of your tail and one last glance at your former home, you turned and trotted away from the life you had known. Unfortunately, making your large donkey body inconspicuous on the quiet neighborhood streets proved quite impossible. An animal control truck pulling a livestock trailer caught up with you before you even reached the outskirts of the neighborhood.
You refused to go with them quietly, braying your indignant brays that fell on deaf ears. Soon, very soon, you would have cause to regret Lance Prescott's attempt to publicize your plight. A missionary connected with a local church had noticed Lance's story and reached out to animal control with an interesting proposal. His church had adopted a village in Burkina Faso, a small sub-Saharan African country also known as one of the poorest on the continent. The church intended to gift the village with livestock, which a generous donor had agreed to pay the shipping costs for transporting the cattle, goats, and one donkey to their new homes.
"I can understand cows and goats," said one of the animal control workers as he held your bridle and maneuvered you from the trailer to a temporary holding pen. "But why a jackass...I'm sorry, I mean donkey?" he said after thinking he should be more polite to a representative of the church.
"Oh, donkeys are extremely useful in these poor villages," the missionary explained. "They don't have motorized vehicles and equipment, so a beast of burden is quite valuable for agricultural work and the transportation of goods."
You brayed and recoiled, but the man gave a sharp tug to the bridle and settled you down.
"You'd think they'd have their own..."
"They do," the missionary explained. "Or they did. Millions of donkeys each year are slaughtered so manufacturers in China can boil the skins to extract the gelatin, which is used to make a traditional Chinese medicine. China doesn't have enough of its own donkeys, so to fill the gap, China is importing donkey skins from developing countries where there are populations of relatively cheap animals."
"Huh! Same as with tigers and rhinos?"
"Sort of," the missionary said.
You are horrified. Even more horrifying is the fact you have absolutely no say in your own fate. You are shipped off to a poor village thousands of miles from your former home, sentenced to a grinding life of hard labor, and always facing the fear that you could be stolen from the humble farming village and slaughtered for your hide.
In the face of all this unremitting grimness, there's the constant regret of ever touching that damn donkey in the field on that most unfortunate day.