Meet the donkey getting paid to crash boring Zoom meetings

Mambo and his friends will surely up your conference call game

COVID-19 has trapped people around the world at home, tied to their computers for a daily event that has quickly become dreadful: the company’s Zoom meeting.

Enter Mambo, the up-to-no-good 8-year-old mini-donkey from Indian Trail, North Carolina.

For USD 50, Mambo’s owners Francie and Mark Dunlap will have Mambo — or any of his friends at the Peace N Peas Farm, 30 minutes outside Charlotte — crash your dull virtual meeting, reported the Charlotte Observer.

Francie Dunlap told the publication that customers can even choose the farm visitor’s display name. Perhaps you’d like to name the animal after the colleague who never logs on or the co-worker who asks too many questions or the boss who organized the meeting in the first place.

“I think it would get some laughs,” Dunlap said. “The animal would make an appearance for the first five or 10 minutes ... so they could actually get along with their meeting.”

So what Peace N Peas resident might want to crash your conference call?

Well, there’s Heiren, a brown 6-year-old Hanoverian horse “that doesn’t leave things alone,” Dunlap said.

Then there’s Eddie, a fancy 13-year-old white show horse or his friend Zeus, a large brown horse “that makes funny faces.”

 



Some of the animals that can be hired as guests for virtual meetings. Photo: Peace N Peas Farm Facebook page

And of course there’s Mambo, the miniature donkey who is known to crowd the camera and bite the fake tails off of the farm’s show horses. Dunlap said Mambo “is like a pesky little brother — doesn’t let anyone relax too long.”

Dunlap created a website on Saturday for people to reserve time with the animals. Already, she said she’s had a number of inquiries — and not all are conference call pranksters. A few, Dunlap says, are friends who teach and want an animal to visit their virtual classroom.

Some families might enjoy the break, too, or Mambo could join your next virtual happy hour.