Alrighty, the donkey story:

When I went to the virgin islands by myself in the summer of 1994, I stayed at the cinnamon bay campground. I had a cottage by the beach, and it was quite lovely. I had taken along several bags of fig newtons, as I knew that sort of thing was quite expensive down there. The second evening I was there, I took my beach chair, a book, and some fig newtons to sit and read until the sunset. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life. After an hour or so, the sun slowly set over the ocean, and I sat there in the chair staring the whole time. The small ocean waves were advancing, and retreating serenely, making that wonderful ocean noise, all the while getting a little higher. Right before the sun set completely, the little waves were starting to rise over the seat of my chair, making me quite wet, but I was completely rooted to the spot, and did not want to move even one inch. After the sun set, I went to my cottage, set all my stuff absent-mindedly on the table and went to sleep.

When I woke, I realized that ants had gotten into my half-eaten package of fig newtons. I threw them away in the little trash can outside my cottage, and thought nothing more of them. I had another glorious day in paradise, and came back to my cottage blissfully tired again that night.

When I woke the next day, right after sunrise, it was to an awful racket outside my room. It sounded as if a steel drum band was trying to destroy all their equipment. When I opened th door, to see what the racket was, I saw a large wild donkey on my porch, trying frantically to get its mouth into a rolling metal trash can with fig newtons at the bottom of it. He was kicking and pushing the can into the wall, the picnic table, and all other empidementia on the porch to try to get those fig newtons. When he saw me, I can swear he looked at me with desperate supplication, "come on guy, help out a poor donkey who is down on his luck, huh?" I patted the donkey on the head, reached into the trash can and pulled out the fig newtons. I hand fed this donkey about a half pound of the chewy cookies, the whole while he looked happy as can be. When the package was empty, he looked at me as if to say "thanks a bunch, guy, you're a trooper" and he mosied on off to see what other trash can goodies he could find at the other cottages.

The next morning, I woke to a odd knock on my door. There was my freind of yesterday, "hey bro, got any more of those fine fig newtons?" I couldn't say no to something like that, so I broke open another bag of fig newtons, sat on the picnic table and shared my breakfast with a wild donkey, next to the beach, with the carribean sun coming up and the marvelous sound of the waves on the air.

This pattern repeated itself, over the next few days, until my last day there, when he came to my door, I was out of fig newtons. I patted him on the head and said I was sorry, but no cookies today. He just looked at me again, "thats alright man, I'll see what else I can find, take care" and went off down the beach.

To this day, there is a donkey necklace hanging in my car, celebrating my freind, the fig newton loving donkey of cinnamon bay, St. John, usvi.