Basil was up with the lark this morning, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, which is not bad considering the events of yesterday.

“Hey Dude,” he greeted me. “That was some party yesterday. Can we go back again today?”

“No way” I said, “There’s work to be done. But first we had better settle you in.”

At this point the dogs all came bounding out the door to greet Basil, while the cats watched cautiously from the windows.

“This some kind of zoo?” asks Basil.

“Kind of,” I replied with a smile. “You’ll be bunking up with the goats.”

“Excuse me? You think I, Basil the Donkey, am going to share a room with goats?”

“They are really quite nice young ladies who….” but as soon as I mentioned the word ‘ladies’ he cantered off in search of the goat pasture. I caught up with him a few minutes later, by which time he was already chatting up Hetty and Donny, and apparently making quite an impression on them.

Later in the day Basil said he needed to check his e-mail. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of letting a code-writing donkey anywhere near my computer, so we drove down to River John to use the computers at the library. These are provided courtesy of the Community Access Program. When I told Basil that the Harper Government had recently withdrawn funding for this project, he was furious.

“I’ll be in Ottawa in a few weeks time,” he said. “Those guys in suits had better watch out.”

After Basil had answered his fan mail, we took a drive along River Road and I showed him where the shipyards were in the 19th century.

“It was really busy here once upon a time,” I told him.

“Really? You could have fooled me,” he answered.

Tags: river john, nova scotia, basil, harper cutbacks, canadian government, goats, travel, tourism, where is basil