Mr. and Mrs. Donkey, of number four, Phoenix Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last donkeys you would expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

   Mr. Donkey was the director of a firm called Trottings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy stallion with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Donkey was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Donkeys had a small son called Danky and in their opinion there was no finer colt anywhere.

   The Donkeys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somepony would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anypony found out about the Trotters. Mrs. Trotter was Mrs. Donkey's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Donkey pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDonkish as it was possible to be. The Donkeys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Trotters arrived in the street. The Donkeys knew the Trotters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This colt was another good reason for keeping the Trotters away; they didn't want Danky mixing with a child like that.

   When Mr. and Mrs. Donkey woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country.