SAN ANTONIO – Two new transfer students have settled in on the Texas A&M University-San Antonio campus as the fall semester gets ready to start.
Except these students have four legs and long pointy years. The university has adopted two donkeys that showed up on campus early this summer and decided to make the college campus their home. Most freshmen students who live on campus live in tight dorm rooms, but these two have the whole 700-acre campus to roam.
The two male donkeys showed up on campus a couple of months ago and TAMU SA police did everything they could to find the owners. The donkeys didn’t have any branding on them to indicate who they may belong to.
“They went around in the neighboring community to see if anyone would claim them but no one has claimed them,” Nan Palmero associate director of marketing TAMU SA said.
The donkeys, which are known for their stubborn nature, let the Jaguars know they were there to stay. The pair has shown up every day since their arrival, roaming where they please. First-year student Juan Chavez said he was surprised when he saw two donkeys in the middle of campus for the first time.
“I saw them by the basketball court and over there by patriots casa,” Chavez said. “That was my first day here for a new student orientation. They were like right there at the front entrance. I was like, that’s pretty cool.”
The university has put up a water trough and salt lick for their new friends. Palmero says they are in the process of figuring out a health care and shelter system for the donkeys on campus, plus potential names.
“The donkeys seem like they are going to be a bigger story for our existence,” Palmero said. “I think that it’s going to become a more interesting piece of our story here.”