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24 hours with Duffy the Mule

David Evans

We are woken at 7.45am by one of the five ma fus (mule handlers). Simon Gillam, the pack transport manager for building contractor Maeda Corporation, arrives about 8am with his wife, Sharon, and their dog, Edward.

They live in a house on Cheung Sha Beach, on the south side of Lantau.

We have a big breakfast of chaff, oats, pony nuts, molasses and corn oil. The amount we get depends on the loads we are carrying. At the moment, we are moving diesel up to the work site and loose dirt and rocks back down.

Four tins of diesel weigh about 80kg. In November, we transported nearly 75 metric tonnes of material up and down the mountain. After breakfast, we are groomed. Like humans, we get bed-hair and bits of hay need to be picked out of our coats.

The first trip up the track starts about 9am after we have been loaded. Simon might stay at the site or travel with us; it depends on his workload. Sharon is one of the ma fus, so she also comes along. The trip takes about 35 minutes each way. We take it easy in the morning because we are like athletes and need to warm up. We are tethered together in twos or threes, or sometimes on our own.

Katie, a five-year-old female, is currently behaving like a precocious teenager. She has kicked out a few times and last week kicked Simon in the thigh. He has had to take her in hand to calm her down, so she's not tethered to anyone. She's a gentle mule but has a lot of attitude. All of us have different personalities and are intelligent, which probably comes from our father's side; always a donkey. Our mothers, all horses, aren't as intelligent as we are. If a horse comes across an obstacle, it gets jittery. We just stand there until the problem goes away. The only things we don't like are umbrellas and bicycles. If someone came along on a bicycle with an umbrella, it would be a recipe for disaster. Working in the countryside we see a few snakes, but they are usually frightened off by the sound of us clumping. Simon says he has seen a rat snake as long as his cargo-container office.

Most mules like to be part of a group, but I like to be

on my own. I'm a good worker, if a bit nervous, which is probably my mother's side coming through. Oscar is a five-year-old male. We call him the 'Karate Kid' because he also likes to lash out from time to time. That's why we don't have shoes on our back hooves; so we don't hurt anyone or each other. Denny's nice. He's five years old, solid and reliable, which is probably why he's referred to as the gentleman of the group. Harry can be a bit mischievous for a six-year-old male, while Chappy is a reliable, unconditional worker. She is only four years old. Simon and Sharon used to be in the British army. Simon was a dog trainer, so he is used to animals. That's probably why Edward is such an obedient dog. We get on well with him considering he is so small and can get under our hooves.

Our second trip is about 11am, and we take lunch up to the workers. If we didn't, they would have to walk down and that would waste a lot of time. Also, it's not economical to fly it up with the helicopters. The helicopters do about 80 per cent of the work. We come into our own when the weather is bad or it's foggy and they can't fly.

We have lunch between 1pm and 2pm. Simon and the ma fus go to the Chinese restaurant in the village at Ngong Ping. Our lunch is much the same as we have for breakfast, except we might have some sugar cane for dessert. In an average day, we'll each have about 10kg of food and about 36 litres of water. There are watering points on the track, but we only have a sip from those because you don't want lots of water sloshing around inside you. We are muzzled for a lot of the working day. It stops us eating stuff we shouldn't and it protects us and the country park. There will be one or two more trips in the afternoon, depending on the weather, loads and how hard Simon thinks we've worked.

The day's over by about 4.30pm, when we have another grooming. The handlers pick the bits from our coat and our feet and brush us down. In summer, we have a shower because it can get very hot and sweaty. In winter, we only have one shower a week. Dinner isn't much different from lunch and afterwards we are given a good rub down to warm us up before we are put in our stables. We wear coats because it can drop to below 10 degrees Celsius at night.

We are also given a big basket of hay in case we get the munchies. Simon, Sharon, Edward and everyone else leave about 6pm and we don't see anyone until the next morning.

Sunday is our day off and that's when we get to relax in the paddock. We're all from Canada and Hong Kong took some getting used to. We were never kept in stables at home and only made a few working trips a year. And, of course, there is the weather. Last September, I started to grow my winter coat and it had to be cut back because it would be too hot for me here.

Every month or so, Gordon Sidlow, a veterinary surgeon with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, pays a visit. He's also a phone call away in case of an emergency, which we haven't had. Apart from a couple of sprains, we've been injury free. I don't think Oscar likes Sidlow. He tried to kick him when he got a vaccination shot in the butt last year.

Our jobs will probably be finished sometime next year

and we're still not sure where we are going. To be honest, I'm only eight years old and have about 15 years of work left in me, so I don't think I'll be ready to retire.

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