By Jeffrey McNeil

There once was a farmer who was trying to sell his wheat on a small farm.

As he was driving to the mill, he came upon what appeared to be a small horse, eating saw grass and tumbleweeds and looking pale and thin from being dehydrated by the hot summer sun.

As he passed, the animal called out, in a weary voice, “Can you help me? I am hungry and thirsty; I have nowhere to go, because my owner said I am just an ass. I am an ass, but I am not worthless. So I told him you could kiss this ass goodbye!”

The farmer felt sorry for this pitiful ass. He started thinking: my daughter always wanted a show pony, maybe she won’t know the difference. So the farmer took him home, fed him oats, and gave him a large trough of cool water to drink out of. The ass now had a place to lay his head and blankets to keep him warm.

The farmer now wanted to surprise his daughter with a gift. He said to her, “Close your eyes and count to three.”

When she opened her eyes, she could not believe what she saw. “A pony!” she squealed, “Thank you, daddy!”

“What are you going to call him?” asked her father.

“How about Jack?” she said.

“That’s a perfect name,” replied her father.

Every day she would ride Jack the ass around and show him off to her friends. She would wash him and brush him. And Jack the ass enjoyed all the attention. He enjoyed being treated like a prized pony for a while, but then one day he complained to the farmer. “I am tired of eating oats, I don’t like lipstick! Why don’t I have shoes like the other horses? I’m not even branded. Why do you still treat me like an ass?”

The farmer listened to this jackass whine and complain, and soon became offended. “You ungrateful ass!” the farmer screamed. “I took you out of the wastelands of the plains where you were eating cactus and tumbleweeds. You’ll never be a real horse because you have long ears and bad manners. You’re not majestic like the mustang or fast like the thoroughbred.”

The farmer got tired of putting up with Jack the ass and decided to sell him cheap. He staked him out in the corner of the field by the road where a passing horse trainer spotted him. The trainer thought a jackass in his stable might calm his racehorses. But instead of calming the horses, the ass pranced around, his mane flowing in the air, acting like one of them. The horses were greatly annoyed and took it out on the trainer.

The trainer realized this ass was getting his goat, and said, “Hit the road, Jack!”

The jackass finally realized he had squandered his chance to live a better life, all because he forgot where he came from.

The moral is: Don’t be a jackass; be grateful for your blessings.