By Leopold Varnum, Holiday Productions Correspondent

PIKE HOLLOW — Casting for the Christmas pageant at Mill Creek Fellowship Church opened last week, and as in every year since 1995, one part was listed on the sign-up sheet as "filled."

That part is the donkey, a two-person brown felt costume with a zipper down the middle and ears stiffened with coat-hanger wire. The front half has been played for 31 straight years by Wendell Ostrander, 74, a retired mail carrier. The back half has been played by his brother-in-law, Gus Pickering, 71, who says he has "never once seen the pageant, only felt it."

The two have walked the center aisle every December without a stumble, a record pageant director Carla Bettencourt called "the most reliable thing this church owns, including the furnace."

The secret, both men say, is the step count. Ostrander calls it out under his breath, in a low mail-route rhythm that he says comes from three decades of walking up porches. Pickering answers with a small cough on every fourth step to confirm he is still attached. "People think it's a donkey noise," Pickering said. "It's a status report."

The church has tried to find replacements. In 2008, two youth group seniors volunteered and made it as far as the second pew before the back half went left and the front half went right, splitting the costume at the zipper in front of the Wise Men. In 2014, a father-and-son team rehearsed for six weeks and did fine until the son heard his mother laughing and stopped walking. In 2021, a pair of identical twins were confident that "we think alike." They did not walk alike, it turned out, and the donkey entered sideways.

Each year, the young Mary in the pageant rides on a small wooden saddle strapped across the middle of the costume. Ostrander said he takes the job seriously. "That's somebody's daughter up there," he said. "And somebody's grandmother sewed that saddle. Nobody falls off my donkey."

The men have rules. No talking inside the costume after the prelude. No sudden stops. No snacks in the back half, a rule Pickering admits was written "after one incident with a peppermint." They also refuse to rehearse with the costume more than once a year, saying the felt "only has so many walks left in it."

Bettencourt said the church council has begun a formal succession plan. It includes a donkey-walking clinic in the fellowship hall on Tuesday nights, with tape marks on the floor and a metronome borrowed from the choir room. So far, four people have signed up, and none of them are the same height.

Ostrander and Pickering said they are in no hurry to retire, but they will hand over the costume once a pair can make it from the back doors to the manger, turn around without hitting the Advent wreath, and get back without anyone in the third row noticing there are people inside.

"Thirty-one years," Pickering said. "And my wife still asks which half I am."

At press time, the Tuesday clinic had produced its first promising pair, who made it all the way to the front before realizing they had zipped the costume on backward.