Raven, the lost donkey Byrnes Mill Police found on Sunday (Jan. 30), has been reunited with its owner.
After Raven was found on Sunday, she was being housed at God’s Grace Animal Rescue in High Ridge, but the owner, a Byrnes Mill resident, picked her up on Tuesday (Feb. 1) after providing proof of ownership, said Lynn Fozzy, founder of the animal rescue organization.
Byrnes Mill Police found Raven on Sunday night after a resident called the department’s non-emergency line at about 6 p.m. and said a donkey was in his backyard on Hess Drive, Chief Frank T. Selvaggio said.
The resident said the donkey ran into the woods behind his house, and Selvaggio and four other officers spent an hour searching for the donkey before finding her.
Selvaggio said the donkey did not have a microchip, so he called Fozzy to temporarily house the donkey.
Fozzy said Selvaggio called her to make sure it was not one of her donkeys, and after she checked that all her own donkeys were accounted for, she offered to house Raven until the owner could be found.
God’s Grace Animal Rescue is a nonprofit farm animal rescue that has been open since 2019.
“If I take an animal like (Raven), it’s to find their home, to find who they belong to and get them back (to the owner),” she said.
Fozzy estimated Raven, a mini donkey, is younger than 10 and probably is a livestock guardian for her owner.
“If you have goats, sheep or chickens or anything like that, donkeys are repellent for coyotes and foxes,” she said. “They will actually kill a coyote.”
The Leader could not reach Raven’s owner for a comment.
Fozzy said she was happy to help the Byrnes Mill Police because they helped her find Zacheus, a small zebu, in the summer of 2019. Zacheus was missing for 30 days after he escaped from an open gate.
“It was kind of cool being able to give them a happy ending like we got because the police helped us find Zach and now we got to participate in somebody else getting their animal back,” she said.