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Russian beachgoers got a shock when they saw a donkey soaring in the blue skies over the balmy beaches on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia last week, police said on Tuesday.

Attached to a parachute, the animal screamed in fear as it circled over heads of holidaymakers sunbathing on a beach in the Cossack village of Golubitskaya in the Krasnodar region.

A regional police spokeswoman said the donkey ended up in the skies as a result of an impromptu advertising campaign by several Russian entrepreneurs to attract beachgoers to their private beach.

Instead, they attracted the attention of regional police who learned of the flying donkey earlier this week and launched a probe.

"The donkey screamed and children cried," said regional police spokeswoman Larisa Tuchkova. "No one had the brains to call police."

Instead, she said, people reached for their cameras and bombarded a local newspaper with phone calls.

"It was put up so high into the sky that the children on the beach cried and asked their parents, 'Why did they tie a doggy to a parachute?'" the newspaper, Taman, said late last week.

"The donkey landed in an atrocious manner. It was dragged several meters along the water, after which the animal was pulled out half-alive onto the shore."

The incident is stunning even for a country where animal cruelty is widespread and came as a shock to the locals, said Taman newspaper's editor, Elena Iovleva.

"This has never happened before," she said.

The footage of the parachuting donkey was aired on national television on Tuesday.

去聽寫專區(qū)一展身手

（中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.