This article focuses on the animal symbolism used for representing the local identity of the southern periphery in Israel. From an ecocritical point of view, the domestic and the wild animal images will be analyzed as expressions of different shades (domestication and wildness) in the category of Nature, on the Nature-Culture dichotomy. The anthropological research method of discourse analysis has been adapted here to review the domestic donkey's image in Sami Berdugo's novel, Donkey (2019), and the discourse on the wild ass's image in the media and especially by activists from the Negev. While the representation of the two types of animals raises awareness of the existential problems of southern periphery's inhabitants, it also exposures nuances in their social status and the local identity reconstruction process.