When we lived in “77 Acres”, our residence was a mobile home on a transmitter site. We were located on the edge of a 77 acre field containing six steel radio antenna towers broadcasting for the radio station my Dad worked for. It was kind of like a low, flat valley, with a high ridge at one side that faced 248th street in Aldergrove, BC.

Our neighbours had the front of their lots facing up on 248th, but down the hill on the back side where we were, each lot had a long grassy field ending at a barbed wire fence that marked the gravel access road that led across the property to our trailer. My sister Kim and I never actually met our neighbours, but we did meet and greet most of their animals every week.

In the lot closest to us stood Pride, a beautiful white stallion. He didn’t approach us, preferring to stay near the centre of his lot, near an old oak tree. He was the strong silent type, only letting us hear his voice in the early morning, when he’d announce himself to the day with one loud whinny. Pride was not alone in his field though; his companion was Thumper, a friendly brown donkey who heehawed morning and night, and loved to come to the fence at the bottom of his field to greet me and my sister. Sometimes we’d feed Thumper pieces of carrot through the barbed wire fence, nervously keeping our hands flat, like our Dad had instructed. I only got my finger bitten once when I was careless.

Sometimes we’d giggle as Thumper tried to scratch his rear-end against a favoured fence post. After a minute of bumping and grinding away, his head would arch up in relief when he finally found the right spot.

One of the fields had some large black bulls, and Dad warned us to stay away from their fence. They could be aggressive and could run fast when they wanted to. To me, they seemed suspicious and angry all the time, and I guessed that they didn’t like kids or maybe anyone.

A couple of fields farther over was one of our most favourite animal neighbours of all, an old white and brown lady cow whom Kim and I nicknamed “Fuzzyface”, because of the little tiny curls of white fur on the bridge of her nose. She would come over to greet us as we walked by, or we’d call her up to the fence just to pet her broad head. We’d offer her little clumps of grass from the bottom of the fence and would get our hands completely washed over by her giant green tongue in reward. She was just the gentlest, sweetest thing for such a large animal, and she hardly ever made a sound. Not one moo as I recall. Dad told us later that her real name was Echo, which I thought was quite beautiful.