Seeing Stripes: Zonkey named Zeus draws stares at Meridian Road farm
RENFREW — There have been reports of people pulling their cars off Meridian Road to get a better look at the strange creature cavorting in a pasture.
But it's not Bigfoot or a chupacabra that's stopping traffic in front of Kathy Kummer's farm.
It's Zeus, the 2-year-old zonkey, the product of a mating between a female donkey and a male zebra.
Zeus' arrival at Kummer's farm, the Lazy K Acres, is the culmination of a dream of Kummer's daughter, Audra Bowers of Fox Chapel. She grew up on the farm with her sisters.
“As a child, my daughter always asked for a zebra. When they started breeding zonkeys, she found one and bought it,” Kummer said.
Bowers said it was her grandfather, “Bus” Kummer, who ignited her love of zebras.
“We had matching zebra shirts,” she said. “He must have been the one that introduced me to zebras.”
Bowers' love of zebras continued even when she became a mother.Last year, when her sister, Randi Foertsch of Saxonburg, was looking for a gelding horse on Craigslist, she came across a notice advertising a gelding zonkey for sale and sent it to Bowers.Bowers bought Zeus from an owner whose ill health prevented her from training the zonkey properly.That was in December, and Zeus was brought to her mother's 20-acre farm.Zeus' mother was a spotted mule and his father was a Grevy's zebra, the largest zebra, Bowers said.Zeus is gray and white with distinctive zebra striping down his pony-sized body and legs. The most donkey-like thing about him might be his big, floppy ears.“All the stripes are definitely zebra, but the brown undercolor is definitely donkey,” Bowers said.“He's pony-sized,” Kummer said. “He's done growing. He might put on some weight.”“I'd say he's about 9 hands high. I don't know how much he weighs,” Bowers said.He's already bigger than his mother, she said, adding she doesn't know how big Zeus will get.Kummer said he's friendly, but spirited. “He is temperamental, very ornery,” she said. “He's friendly but strong-minded. He and I have a love/hate relationship.”Bowers agreed, “Zeus is very mischievous, very intelligent, which gets him in trouble like a toddler.“He nips. He nips not to be mean, but because he's a stinker.”Kummer's friend, Will Boosel, 14, handles Zeus' evening feedings.“I brush him and he lets me pet him,” Will said.And the zonkey is fast.“If you scare him by accident, he will do six laps in not even a minute,” he said.“I feed and water him every day,” Will said. “I get credit for community service at Butler Catholic, but I do it mostly because I like him.”Kummer's 8-year-old granddaughter, Teagan Bowers, stops by three or four evenings a week to look in on Zeus. “We can't ride him; he's not trained yet,” Teagan said.And Zeus will need a lot of training, Bowers said.“He's got that donkey personality, and he's hard to keep trained,” she said.Zeus was able to be led by a rope when he was brought to the farm, but three months in the barn during the winter caused him to revert to his donkey nature. “A donkey is smarter than a horse,” Bowers said. “You have to ask it to do something, not tell it. If you use force, it will remember.”
“I hope to get him in cart training and then saddle broke,” she added.“The original plan was to break him to a cart and take him around to the fairs and farm show,” Kummer said. “I did some research on it but didn't take it far enough. It's hard enough to get a lead on him.”Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic canceled all the fairs and the farm show.“I'd love to get him trained to the point where my 8-year-old could show him,” Bowers said.Kummer said Zeus' diet doesn't require any special attention. Just turn him loose in his 3-acre pasture and he's fine.He seems to especially enjoy the recent 90-degree days, lazing in the sunlight while his stablemate, an 18-year-old Percheron horse named Deena, prefers to stay in the barn.Of course, eating and lazing in the sun are about all that Zeus is good for, so far.“He's just a pasture ornament,” said Kummer, who noted there's often three or four cars stopped along the road on weekends to get a glimpse of the zonkey.“He stops traffic on Meridian Road. It's like the Living Treasures drive-through safari on Meridian Road,'” Bowers said.Kummer has put up signs on the fence paralleling Meridian Road saying “Danger: Animal may bite” to dissuade people from getting too close to Zeus.But to Bowers, Zeus is where he should be. “I definitely feel this takes something off my bucket list,” said Bowers of her zonkey purchase.
