No, you can't have the car tonight

I have been doing some work on my barn, trying to finish the siding.  This is all part of my Mother-Of-All-DIY-Projects that began in 2008 when I bought a piece of land and decided to build a house and a barn by myself.  That is a long story for another day, suffice it to say that my house and my barn are mostly finished.  Still, in the past few weeks I have been trying to finally get the battens on my barn, which is why it is sporting candystripes lately.

In order to work on one of the walls, I had to move a riding lawn mower out of its normal position under the shed roof of the barn.  Since I like to give my horses ample opporuntily to learn about potentially scary stuff in a safe and comfortable environment, I simply pushed the mower into the area in front of the barn and let Emma and Tessa give it a thorough going over.  Beyond a few nose-prints on the mower, what could it hurt?  

Well, a while later, I returned my attention to the mower.  I was amused to notice that the entire mower was covered with slightly muddy nose-prints.  I remained amused right up to the moment that I tried to start the thing.  My thoughts from that point went something like this:

Oh no, where's the key
OH NO, Emma has the key
OH NO, EMMA HAS THE KEY!

You really don't want to know the exact words going through my head at this point.  I was just beginning to think about how I might be able to get Emma to Cornell for emergency key removal when I spotted a shiny glint on the ground.  Thank God, there it was.  The whole thing was somewhat bent and the plastic bit on the end showed distinct donkey teeth-marks.  

Note to Self (and any other donkey owners or prospective owners):  One's donkey can not be trusted with the keys to the family car, or lawn mower, or tractor, wheel barrow, hammer, clothing, tools, etc, etc, etc,....

In fact, one's donkey cannot be trusted with anything that she can get into her mouth no matter how remote the possibility may seem.  One's donkey simply cannot be trusted.