Diesel the missing donkey, who had been lost for the last 5 years, was miraculously spotted alive, living with a group of elk in the wild.
A couple living at a ranch near Auburn in California with various animals were disheartened when their beloved pet, Diesel the donkey, went missing five years ago.
In 2019, along the Cache Creek Wilderness, Terrie Drewry, her husband Dave, and Diesel went for a hike when the pet donkey ran away.
The couple searched high and low for Diesel on foot, used horses, and even employed a drone to scan the entire area. However, they were unable to find any signs of the donkey.
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Terrie told CBS Sacramento how a mountain lion might have spooked Diesel and caused him to run away. After weeks of futile search efforts, the couple lost hope of finding their four-legged family member.
Through a Bureau of Land Management program, the Drewrys adopted the wild donkey but were unsure if the animal would be able to survive in the forest on its own.
Five years later, on a hunting trip, Californian hunter and triathlete Max Fennell was amazed when he captured footage of a donkey living among a herd of wild elk.
As soon as he posted the video on his Instagram account, it received a lot of attention with more than 144,000 likes.
He captioned the video, “I bumped into a herd of elk that have adopted a donkey, I can’t get over seeing it and I’m amazed that the donkey looks happy and healthy!”
Terrie suspected the donkey in the video was their long-lost pet Diesel, who vanished five years ago.
The area where Diesel was spotted is only a few miles from where he was last seen, and there are no wild donkeys in the region.
Terrie and Dave were delighted to see their precious pet donkey well and alive in the company of wild elk.
Terrie believes Diesel is eight years old and has learned to live together with the other animals to form a family, and that it may have killed coyotes and a mountain lion while protecting the herd.
Terrie and Dave have adopted more donkeys in the last five years and have no plans of capturing Diesel and bringing him back home.
They feel it would be “impossible” to catch Diesel because he’s now become “truly a wild burro.” They are glad he’s safe and doing what he was raised to do!
