Runaway donkey to be auctioned off by sheriff’s office

The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office is looking for the owner of a runaway donkey.

A woman found the brown donkey Saturday morning as it wandered on her land in the 17300 block of W. Newberry Road in Gainesville, said Art Forgey, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. The woman reported the animal to deputies at about 12:45 p.m.

As ACSO Rural Services deputies searched for the donkey’s owner Saturday, it stayed overnight on the woman’s property. Deputies hauled it to ACSO’s Livestock Impound Yard on Sunday, Forgey said.

For the next 30 days or so, the sheriff’s office will advertise for the donkey’s owners to claim the missing animal, he said. If the owners are not found, the sheriff’s office will post an auction notice and sell the donkey about two weeks later.

Forgey said he doesn’t know how much someone might pay for a runaway donkey.

“It just depends,” Forgey said. “You know, cattle usually brings quite a bit. This may be our first donkey.”

Deputies haven’t named the donkey or announced its gender, Forgey said.

The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information on the donkey’s owner to call 352-955-1818.

“Someone is missing a pretty animal that they’d like to have back,” Forgey said, “and we’d like to reunite it.”

Tom Sullivan, a 28-year-old Alachua County resident, said he is interested in buying the donkey and introducing it to his herd of about 450 cattle and goats.

After learning about the donkey’s escape Monday through a post on the sheriff’s office’s Facebook page, Sullivan said he wasn’t surprised the animal had wandered away from home.

Old tree branches in the area routinely fall and knock down fences, which sometimes leads to similar escapes, he said.

While he hopes the sheriff’s office finds the owners, Sullivan said he doesn’t want to see the animal go to auction. He’d rather let it live among his 550 acres of land between Newberry and the city of Alachua.

“I’ve always just sort of wanted a donkey (on my land),” he said. “I just think it would be sort of cool to expand the herd a bit.”