Courtesy of Terry and Dave Drewry
Diesel (right) photographed in 2018, the year before his disappearance.
CNN
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Five years ago, when Diesel the donkey escaped while hiking near his home outside Sacramento, California, his owners assumed the worst.
“He’s not aggressive, he’s affectionate,” Terry Drewry told CNN affiliate KOVR in 2019, days after Diesel’s escape, “but right now he’s scared.”
Years went by with no sign of Diesel alive, but earlier this year, a hunter spotted and photographed a herd of at least 12 elk in the Northern California wilderness, including, oddly enough, a wild burro.
Drewry is convinced the donkey seen in Hunter’s video is her Diesel.
“I finally got to see him,” Drewry told KOVR this month after the Instagram video began going viral. “I finally knew he was OK. Living his best life. Happy. Healthy. Relieved.”
The Drewrys adopted Diesel from the Bureau of Land Management, and he lived peacefully on a farm for the first few years of his life, alongside chickens, llamas, and a miniature donkey.
But on one fateful hike in April 2019, Diesel noticed something, spooked himself, took off running, and dragged Drewry’s husband, Dave, into the brush behind him, she told KOVR at the time. They searched for Diesel for weeks in the Cache Creek Wilderness, a rugged area of about 30,000 acres northwest of Sacramento. They thought they’d found him on trail cameras, and once found some footprints that might have matched his hoofprints, but they were never able to find him.
Max Fennell is a professional triathlete who occasionally hunts with a bow and arrow in the California wilderness. On one hunting trip in March, Fennell stumbled upon a herd of elk and was surprised to see a burro among them.
In the video, which Fennell shot — Drewry said was taken just a few miles from where Diesel escaped in 2019 — the herd can be seen moving in unison. When Fennell spots the herd, they stop and stare at him.
The animals didn’t move until the donkey let them know it was safe. The donkey stared at Fennell in disbelief, then turned his head and trotted off, followed closely by the moose.
“Probably one of the wildest hunting trips ever,” Fennell wrote in the caption of the Instagram video. “Awesome by the sights and how happy and healthy the donkeys look!”
Donkeys not only help clear land, pull carts, and provide cuteness, but they also guard livestock on farms, and these herd animals will defend their flocks fiercely by braying, kicking ferociously, and baring their teeth and charging at would-be predators.
Courtesy of Terry and Dave Drewry
Diesel and Dave Drewry
Drewry suspects that if the donkey Fennell witnessed is indeed Diesel, he is simply doing his duty as a donkey and protecting his deer friends.
“They learned to get along and become each other’s family,” she told KOVR.
Diesel and a fellow moose were also allegedly seen in a video shared last September, with the burro looking very content as it galloped through tall yellow grass in dappled sunlight.
Drewry said he misses Diesel but won’t try to capture him and bring him home. Wild donkeys are grazers, meaning there’s usually plenty of food available, and the donkey in Fennell’s video seems to be thriving in the wild with its peers.
“He’s a real wild donkey now,” she said.
