Around Town
‘They Are Such Lovable, Amazing Animals’: Donkeys Move In at New Canaan Nature Center
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Bill Flynn, executive director of the New Canaan Nature Center, has watched these past five days as visitors to the beloved 13-acre property have gravitated toward a newly installed barn near its well-known “sugar shack.”
There, in a paddock flanked by chickens and goats, four rescued donkeys that have lived for years on a private property New Canaan have taken up residence. “People are just flocking to them,” Flynn said on a cool, overcast morning as preschoolers from the Nature Center’s program as well as First Presbyterian next door gazed on Poppy, Charlie, Tilly and Chipper.
“It was a struggle for a year and the little bit to get through all of the red tape of them coming here, but people have been really excited and will have a great relationship with them because they are such approachable animals and so social,” he said. “It’s easy to have a connection with them.”
It’s been nearly one year since Flynn and the Nature Center applied to the town to install a new barn for the donkeys, whose longtime owner on North Wilton Road made arrangements for the animals (and still visits them twice daily) as she downsized to a different home within New Canaan. Plans for a single new structure that would house chickens and goats as well as the donkeys gave way, over time, to physically relocating the donkeys’ own original barn on North Wilton Road to the Nature Center itself.
They moved in last Thursday.
“The most exciting part is that it feels like this is just what it should be,” Flynn said. “The barn looks exactly the way it should be, it looks great, it fits in with the rest of the farm with the chickens and the goats and we’ve got the Sugar Shack, and groups just gravitate toward them.