Barron Park's warm fuzzies / Resident donkeys a neighborhood tradition

Welcome to the neighborhood party at Bol park in Barron Park, a Palo Alto neighborhood that has maintained strong community spirit through the years. It also is the home of two donkeys. Volunteers take care of them and take them to community events for the kids to pet. in Palo Alto 8/28/05 Chris Hardy / San Francisco Chronicle less Welcome to the neighborhood party at Bol park in Barron Park, a Palo Alto neighborhood that has maintained strong community spirit through the years. It also is the home of two donkeys. Volunteers take care of ... more Photo: Chris Hardy Photo: Chris Hardy Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Barron Park's warm fuzzies / Resident donkeys a neighborhood tradition 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Barron Park's resident movie star ignored all the attention from children and adults.

Instead he and his best buddy focused on eating. The lush green grass of the Palo Alto neighborhood's Bol Park was just too tempting for Pericles and his companion, Miner Forty-Niner, who otherwise have to settle for a twice-daily mix of alfalfa and grass hay.

Pericles, better known as Perry, is the miniature donkey that served as the model for the irrepressible Donkey in the 2001 "Shrek" and 2004 "Shrek 2," PDI/DreamWorks' hit animation movies. Miner Forty-Niner, known as Niner, is a standard donkey, said Doug Moran, president of the Barron Park Association.

They joined in the annual neighborhood welcome party Aug. 28 as longtime residents chatted with newcomers, who came with their kids and dogs, ate ice cream and learned about what makes this neighborhood special.

Barron Park is in southwest Palo Alto, roughly bounded by El Camino Real on the east, Stanford Research Park and Matadero Creek on the north, industrial lands along Foothill Expressway on the west and Arastradero Road on the south. It has a semi-rural feeling because it wasn't annexed to Palo Alto until 1975.

Many people have lived here for decades. Among them are Edith and Leland Smith. He's a retired Stanford music professor, and she's an artist who has made the donkeys the subject of her works over the years. At the party, she was selling some of her watercolors and T-shirts made from the images. Proceeds go toward the donkeys' care and feeding.

The Smiths are among the two dozen or so volunteers who take turns feeding the gelded donkeys twice a day. The volunteers also get together periodically to repair their corral, which is next to the park.

Another volunteer and longtime resident is Inge Harding-Barlow, who led the 11-year-old Perry to and from the party. Bob Frost, also a long-timer who coordinates the volunteers' schedule, led the 21-year-old Niner.

Besides attending the welcome party, the two donkeys are taken to Bol Park from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Sundays, weather permitting. Their handlers teach the kids about donkey safety (don't get right behind them) and let them pet and groom the animals. The handlers also collect donations for the donkeys' care.

At the welcome party, one little girl who was petting Perry asked why he was so dusty. Harding-Barlow explained that the donkeys take dust baths to get rid of bugs.

In the meantime, Perry just kept eating. "They're very tolerant, especially with small children," Harding-Barlow said.

Neighborhood tradition

The donkeys are part of a neighborhood tradition that goes back to the 1930s.

According to longtime residents and Doug Graham, historian for the Barron Park Association, Cornelis Bol and his wife, Josina, emigrated from Holland to escape the Nazis and settled in Barron Park because Stanford University had invited Cornelis Bol to become a research associate in its physics department. He went on to invent the mercury vapor lamp. The couple also owned and operated the Emway Mutual Water Co., which served the neighborhood and later was sold to Palo Alto.

The Bols had six sons and began buying more Barron Park land and farming it. They also acquired a variety of animals, including some donkeys, which they let neighborhood children ride in the pasture that later became Bol Park.

Their first donkey was a jack; then they got two jennies to keep him company. One of them, called Jenny, produced six offspring over the years.

When Harding-Barlow arrived in Barron Park, there were seven donkeys: Jenny and her offspring. Every so often they would get loose and march around the neighborhood single file, she said. In the afternoon, they would line up along their Laguna Avenue fence and greet people as they returned from work, Edith Smith said.

The Smiths' daughter, Teresa (now Teresa Smith-Milo), and some of her friends helped Josina Bol after school and rounded up the donkeys if they got loose. The girls knew that if they could get Jenny, the others would follow her.

As the Bols' sons grew up and left home, some of the donkeys were parceled out. One of them, Negrita, went to Teresa Smith, who had saved her money to buy the black donkey. Negrita lived in the Smiths' backyard and learned tricks, such as shaking hands. Nearby Gunn High School used her as a mascot for the football team in the early '60s, Edith Smith said.

After Cornelis Bol died in July 1965, the Barron Park Association worked with Santa Clara County to form an assessment district to tax residents for most of the cost of about 5 acres of the Bol property at about half its market value in 1970. In accordance with Cornelis Bol's wishes, that land became Bol Park. The only donkeys left by then were Jenny and her son Mickey. Jenny died in the mid-'70s.

Josina Bol lived in a cottage on her land and kept Mickey in a 1-acre pasture until her death in 1996 at the age of 95. After her death, the pasture was deeded to the city to be added to Bol Park.

The city and neighborhood donors paid for Mickey's care for a few months until the association took over in November 1996. The remaining Bol property was sold to developer James Witt, who had grown up in the area. He allowed Mickey to stay if the neighbors would care for him. The donkey corral is still on Witt's land next to Bol Park.

Mickey was 29 years old and ailing, but volunteers like the Smiths and Harding-Barlow worked hard to restore his health . Perry arrived in early 1997. Born in 1994, he came from a stable in Woodside, where he was a companion to retired racehorses being trained as polo ponies for Stanford. However, he had been taken too soon from his mother and had some insecurities, so he would bite the horses if they ignored him.

"You can see his attitude and insecurities in the 'Shrek' movies," said Doug Moran, president of the Barron Park Association.

Clyde Farmer, a Barron Park resident and Mickey's farrier, heard about Perry, who soon was on his way to Mickey's pasture. The day Perry arrived, Mickey just stood in the middle of the pasture as Perry galloped around him, Edith Smith said.

However, they soon became fast friends. As Mickey's health continued to fail, Perry would lie next to him and try to protect him. "They were just as sweet as could be," Harding-Barlow said. Mickey was euthanized in 1998.

About that time, a Los Altos Hills family was moving to Colorado and donated Miner as a companion to Perry. The family had adopted Niner as a pet after he was captured in the Mojave Desert as a yearling in 1984.

Perry "has a very sweet sense of humor. He thinks he's a big dog. Niner thinks of himself as a 6-foot mule," Harding-Barlow said.

Funds for the donkeys' care come entirely through donations and are funneled through Acterra, formed in 2000 by a merger of the Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation and Bay Area Action. Food, vet and farrier expenses total about $1,600 a year. The Palo Alto nonprofit officially owns the donkeys, administers the funds and provides insurance for about $200 a year. Acterra's involvement makes donations tax-deductible.

The donkeys take part in other Barron Park activities such as the annual May fete, complete with a maypole in the park. They visit nearby schools and lead the annual holiday caroling parade through the neighborhood to Barron Park Elementary School.

Perry's journey to "Shrek" stardom started when computer animation artists from Pacific Data Images (DreamWorks acquired a majority interest in PDI in 2000, creating PDI/DreamWorks) were looking for donkeys on the Internet.

"They were amazed to find them less than a mile away," said Moran, the association president. At the time, PDI had its headquarters next to Fry's Electronics on the other side of El Camino Real. It's now in Redwood City.

The PDI artists had thought they'd use Niner, but after photographing and videotaping both donkeys, they decided he was too laid-back, whereas Perry had more attitude and nervous energy, Moran said. Besides, Niner had tried to eat a crew member's handmade boots -- "terrible manners," Harding-Barlow said.

Today, Barron Park has 1,600 to 1,800 households, Moran said. About 400 of them belong to the neighborhood association, paying about $20 a year to cover the costs of its quarterly newsletter, which also is posted on its Web site, www.bpaonline.org, and to help pay for the social events. The association has an annual meeting in February.

The association has its roots in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when neighbors banded together to limit the size of a pit that Caltrans was digging as part of an El Camino Real paving project. The neighborhood had a volunteer fire department until Barron Park's annexation to Palo Alto.

Although association activity ebbed and flowed over the years, it took on much of its present form in the '60s.

"This is a strong neighborhood," Moran said. "It has a very rural feel to it, and the donkeys add to it."

Donkey dough

Donations for the donkeys' care can be sent to Acterra, 3921 E. Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303. Checks should be made payable to the Palo Alto Donkey Project.