I'm a tree wrapper

What?

You heard me.
I wrap trees.

You've heard of tree huggers, right? They're big here in Oregon.
We, Oregonians, love our trees. Many Oregonians will go to great lengths to protect them, too...some at any cost.

It's a fact that one of the loveliest things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that we have so many great, big, beautiful evergreens - forests filled with magnificent trees, many of them old-growth, never before logged trees.

Well, being the native Oregonian that I am, I love trees, too. It's no surprise to me that we wound up on a piece of property with a lot of them:

And, apparently, mine now need some protecting, too.

Here's one kind of tree wrapper:

And here's another:

but neither of these is what I'm talking about.

The primary pasture where my foster donkeys spend their days has a lot of trees:

I use the term "pasture" loosely. It is an approximately 3-acre fenced area filled with many, many Douglas Fir trees, a few Madrone trees, and quite a few Maple trees:

Then there are all those other things that tend to grow on a forest floor: ferns, wildflowers, Solomon Seal, Oregon Grape. However, a bunch o' really cute donkeys came through...:

...and those things aren't really on the ground anymore. But we've still got trees. At least for now we do.

Did you know that donkeys like to eat stumps?:

They chew them down until there isn't much left:

There are a lot of tree stumps in their pasture and they've spent hours chewing and rubbing, sniffing and biting these:

They also eat bark:

Now, this wouldn't be a bad thing if said behavior was limited to the stumps. Unfortunately, they have extended this activity to the living trees, as well.

On the morning I noticed this:

had been done to this:

...I quickly collected eggs, picked raspberries... and brought out the chicken wire:

The donkeys were terribly excited when I stepped through their gate with an armful of something new and interesting and came trotting down to see:

Everyone needed time to do the sniff test:

Brownie kept a close eye on my every move:

He came closer and closer:

Until I thought he might lend me a hand, er, hoof:

He tried very hard to convince himself that what I was doing was actually in his favor:

...and though still confused about the whole event, Ian and Brownie's support was unwavering:

But I guess we can pretty much tell what Pistol's attitude was on the whole thing:

I have wrapped the tree:

When I finished, Ian, recognizing the effort I had put into this, willingly posed next to my handiwork. He also promised not to chew live trees anymore:

Now that I've protected the bark, though, I'm thinking this tree may have bigger issues that I can't really help with: