He was stuck out in the heat 🥵
One warm Saturday in November, Frances and Lorne Edwards set out from their home in southwestern Arizona for a drive to Lake Havasu. As they cruised along I-40, Lorne glanced across the desert landscape toward the mountains — and suddenly spotted something unusual.
A wild burro was sitting perfectly still on a frontage road, positioned directly on top of a cattle guard.
Wild donkeys are a familiar sight in Arizona, and the Bureau of Land Management advises people to admire them from afar due to their strong-willed and unpredictable nature. But this burro’s odd posture made the couple uneasy. They exited the highway to get a closer look — and quickly realized the animal was in serious trouble. All four of his legs had slipped through the bars of the cattle guard, trapping him in place.
Cattle guards are metal grids laid over deep pits in roadways to stop livestock and burros from wandering into traffic. Unfortunately, this determined donkey had stepped right onto the grate and become completely stuck. He couldn’t budge, and in the 91-degree heat, he had no access to shade or water.
Frances, who works for the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, immediately attempted to contact animal control, but the team was unavailable. So she and Lorne decided they couldn’t wait.
Frances reached out to off-duty animal control officer Monique Cunnius and gathered several friends to help. Soon, a group of six people was on-site, committed to freeing the exhausted burro.
“We used blankets and sheets to create a makeshift gurney and slid it underneath him,” Frances told The Dodo. “Once we had them in place, we lifted together and managed to free his front legs.”
Next, the group carefully shifted the metal grate just enough to release the donkey’s back legs — only for his front legs to slip back into the openings. At roughly 550 pounds, the burro required every ounce of strength the team had left.
“With one more big heave, we all pulled together and finally got him out,” Frances said.
The rescue took nearly four hours. When it was over, the burro stayed sitting in the road, gathering his strength. He was dazed and clearly exhausted, with scrapes along each leg where the grate had rubbed his skin, but thankfully he had no serious injuries.
After a brief rest, the donkey stood up and wandered off with only minor wounds.
According to the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, he let out a loud bray as he left — “as if to say, ‘Thank you.’”