The donkey lady featured in Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the game’s many points of interest that can be explored. Not only is this gruesome sight a reference to a glitch in the first Red Dead Redemption game, in which an NPC with the head of a donkey and body of a human would pop up, but the unfortunate creature also has a detailed backstory that can be discovered with a little bit of digging.
Players can find the donkey lady in New Austin by going South of Armadillo. They can only access this point of interest while playing as John Marston after the ending of the game, since New Austin isn’t available on the map until the epilogue. John will eventually find a run-down ranch, but this will only lead to more questions.
In the middle of the ranch, there is a human attached to a large dowel that’s part of a larger wheel and turning mechanism. It’s unclear what the machine is used to generate but it’s likely a grinding wheel that was used to grind grain, among other things. In older times, it was common for a donkey or horse to be attached to the shaft so that they would have to walk in circles in order to grind the ingredients. It may appear strange that a human is attached to the machine, but upon closer examination, John will see that the body may not be human after all.
The Story Behind RDR2’s Donkey Lady
What’s so grotesque about this scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 is that it isn’t any regular body. Rather, it appears to have the head of a donkey attached to it. It’s unclear how or why the donkey’s head became attached to the woman’s body, but clearly someone thought it would be a good idea to put the human-donkey hybrid to work. Ultimately, however, the creature didn’t survive. “What was this poor thing? Who would do such a thing to any creature?” John will write in his journal.
Players aren’t able to interact with the body. Likewise, there are no clues on the premises indicating what happened to the donkey lady. But luckily, a newspaper clipping that can be found elsewhere in the game provides some context. In the Blackwater Ledger, no. 70, there’s an article talking about the remains of a human-donkey person that was discovered by geologists.
However, the experts sound just as confused about where this Red Dead Redemption 2 creature came from as John is in his journal. “The site, just south of Armadillo, contains the remains of a woman and also the head of a common donkey, leaving experts to wonder if they come from one beast of if an animal attacked and dismembered both a woman and her donkey and dragged the sections elsewhere,” the clipping reads.
Some players have reported being able to interact with the body upon visiting the ranch a second and third time. Mr.BossFTW posted a video to YouTube exploring this. He originally wasn’t able to interact with the body at all, but upon coming back a second time, the body had been taken off the dowel, though he still couldn’t touch the body. Not even a fire bottle would have any impact. Finally, during a third visit, the body was marked by an ‘x’ on the map. The player was able to pick up the donkey lady and put her on his horse. He rode her into the nearest town, but most of the townsfolk seemed unbothered, and this appears to be the extent that players can interact with the donkey lady.
The donkey lady is one of Red Dead Redemption’s weirdest points of interest, though it’s definitely worth checking out a couple of times.