War certainly makes for strange friends. A group of U.S. Marines living in Iraq's Anbar Province three years ago, befriended a donkey who wandered into their camp. They named him "Smoke the Donkey" and made him their mascot. When the marines departed in 2009 they left Smoke in the care of a local sheik.
 |
One of the marines, retired Col. John Folsom, couldn't forget about Smoke. He used to walk Smoke daily and it didn't seem right to him that the donkey was left behind in Iraq. He decided to bring Smoke to the U.S., which proved to be a difficult task. First, the sheik who was looking after Smoke demanded $30,000 for the donkey, but later drop his demand. Then there was the predictable bureaucracy, paperwork and logistics involved with transporting a donkey 7,000 miles. Next there was the cost. Bringing Smoke to the U.S. cost between $30,000 to $40,000, which was covered by donations.
After 37 days, Smoke finally arrived in the United States, where he will begin his new job as a therapy animal. Folsom met Smoke in New York, to transport him to his new life in Omaha. "He's an American donkey now," Folsom said.
 |
Operation Smoke – Day 1Date: Tuesday - April 5, 2011Time: 9:46 a.m. (Iraqi time)Location: Erbil, Kurdistan
We are about an hour away from beginning our journey with Smoke to Istanbul, Turkey. It poured rain all night so we have our fingers crossed the truck that we hired to transport Smoke to the border will not get stuck in the mud leading to the farm. If we decide it is too risky we will walk Smoke to where we can load him. This is tricky since the truck does not have a ramp.
The drive to Zakho, which is where we will cross into Turkey, is about a three hour drive from Erbil. We have been told once we get there to prepare to spend up to 5 hours actually getting processed to cross. Hopefully, it will not take this long because that extends Smoke’s trip in the back of a truck for even longer. We are hoping to have no delays, but in this part of the world you have to prepare for that. As far as we can tell though we have all the documents in order to satisfy the Turkey agriculture officials. This week we got Smoke tested for a number of things by the main Veterinary Lab in Erbil and the blood work came back negative, which was a relief – yet what we expected. This morning we got the Kurdistan Ministry of Agriculture to sign off on all the necessary documents too, so I think we are good to good – hopefully!
Smoke has been taking it easy the last few days in preparation for his journey to his forever home. Attached is a photo taken of him playing with one of the puppies at the farm. I also attached pictures of him getting his blood work done. Not a fun thing for Smoke, but he was fairly cooperative. Will send more pictures that we’ll take throughout the day.
 |
0 comments:
Post a Comment