It was a cold and snowy February afternoon in Alberta today, with a sharp North wind and dreadful wind-chill factors. I looked out my kitchen window at the gray sky and heavy, wet snow blowing sideways and thought about my little donkey family out in the pasture. How could I warm their furry tummies?

In the horse books I used to read as a girl, someone inevitably made hot bran mash. I always thought this sounded so wise and nurse-y and perfect. They never explained what a bran mash was, but I always wanted to do one for someone. Today looked like that day had finally arrived.

I asked my friends on the donkeys@onelist.com Internet list what I could make for Valentine, Truffles, and °SeÒor! that would be warm, and that I might have in my kitchen. Jim Entsen said his little Throcky likes oatmeal. "And be sure to put a little sugar in it," he said.

Great idea. And just at teatime, which is 4:00 exactly, as Valentine will tell you at the drop of a serviette. Valentine is Canadianizing herself, having become hopelessly enamored of Afternoon Tea in the 12 months she has been north of the 49th Parallel - not enamored so much with the tea part, you understand, as the peppermint and oat and apple part. And carrot part. (erp. parn' me.) And Fig Newton part.

"And Froot Loop part!" chimes in °SeÒor!. "And Frosted Mini-Wheat part!"

"And I like the part," Truffles says, "Where I get to see how much of everybody else's part I can eat first because The Center of The Universe should have everything."

So oatmeal for teatime it was. I figured in order to get it out to the Donkey House warm, I should put on my long underwear, Below Zero socks, turtleneck, down vest, snowboarder pants, John Wayne boots and hood on before I started to make it. Then all I'd have to do was put on my down jacket with the donkey slobber on the peppermint pocket, and mitts, and head for the pasture.

So all bundled up, sweat trickling down my forehead and between my shoulder blades, I stood at the stove and made the oatmeal and stirred in the brown sugar when it was done, and put it all in three square Ziplock plastic containers and put them in my knapsack along with a one-liter yogurt container of oats, an apple cut in 12 wedges for Valentine, a sliced carrot each for Truffles and °SeÒor!, and our well-thumbed copy of Brighty of The Grand Canyon. Teatime is not teatime without a story.

I trudged off into the swirling snowstorm as fast as I could. When I got to the pasture gate, I bellowed "Room service! Afternoon tea!" Three dear furry heads peeked out of the Donkey House door.

"Just the Very Person we were Looking for," said Valentine.

"Marvelous!" said Truffles, "You've brought all this out here for little ol' me." She laid her jaw on my shoulder and put her eye smack on my glasses. "I don't have to share, do I?"

"Ya got somethin' fer a Buckaroo in there?" asked °SeÒor!, helping me off with my backpack.

"Wait until you see what we've got today," I said. "This international dish comes highly recommended by a Mr. Throckmorton in the U. S. of A." I took the lids off the containers and gave the sugared oatmeal to each one of my gourmands with a flourish.

"Eww," said Valentine.

"Eww," said Truffles.

"Eww," said °SeÒor!.

"What?" I said, "I can't believe this. This is nice, warm oatmeal. It's like a bran mash! I made it all myself, just for you and the snowy day." I looked at them plaintively. "With brown sugar."

"I'm sure you did, dear," said Valentine, who always tries to be gracious. "Here. I'll just take the Teensiest Ever taste, for which Gallantry I'm quite Sure you'll give me a Peppermint." She planted her feet firmly in the straw and leaned backwards, at the same time stretching her gray neck forward. She gathered her upper lip into a long point and stuck it daintily into the oatmeal. She raised her beautiful brown eyes to mine. "Eww," she said.

"For trying," I said, and gave her a peppermint. I set the oatmeal container on a straw bale and did some housework while my donkeys had their usual "oats as God made them," as Truffles muttered subversively into her dish.

I offered little brown °SeÒor! some carrot slices. He pretended to chew them, but when he thought I wasn't looking, he lowered his head and dropped them quietly into the straw. He turned and put his forehead against Valentine's stomach. "She can't cook worth a tinker's dam, can she, Mom," he whispered.

Valentine looked over at me without moving her head. "Shh, dear," she said. "The woman means well."

With my cleaning chores done and the donkeys' snack dishes put away, I got the battery lantern down from its hook, lit it, and sat down on my up-ended five-gallon pail to read aloud the next chapter of Brighty of The Grand Canyon. We were all cozy and snug in the Donkey House. The wind blew and the snow still fell heavily outside, but when the donkeys lifted small mouthfuls of hay from their buckets, we could all smell last summer. I opened the little book.

"Look, °SeÒor!" I said, showing him the picture. "Today's chapter is called 'The Lion Hunt'. Oh boy! No more namby-pamby Christmas stories, eh?"

"Wul, no ma'am! This's real Buckaroo stuff!" he said, as he wiggled right up next to me. "Lions! Now yer talkin'!" I scratched his neck with one hand as I began to read the chapter. Truffles looked over °SeÒor!'s back and listened to the story intently with her ears forward.

Valentine serenely ate her hay, one long ear aimed at me like a radio antenna. When the lion jumped out of the tree onto Brighty's back, she looked up and stopped chewing. "Did you see cougars when you were wild in the desert like Brighty?" I asked her.

"My mom was wild like Brighty?" °SeÒor! said, just overwhelmed. "Wul, this's just Buckaroo Super!"

"Not only that," Truffles said proudly as I closed the book, "She's never made a bowl of oatmeal in her life."

Karen Morrison and her darling donkeys live on a cattle and grain farm in Southern Alberta. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Karen has been on the farm since she met and married her husband, Dale, in 1976. A former city girl, she documented her new-to-the-farm stories in a Canadian Farm paper, "Grainews," for nearly 10 years. She acquired her donkey family in February 1999 and is enjoying the adventure. Her donkey stories are published in "The Brayer, The Journal of the American Donkey and Mule Society."