June 17, Tuesday – Horse Island

To play into the draw of Assateague National Seashore I armed myself with my camera and set out in pursuit of the famous wild horses. I found a band of horses taking a morning walk along the highway. Without leaving the comfort of my car I fired away with the digital. I noted how all the horses looked bloated. A little research explained why: “The horses spend most of their time grazing on abundant but nutrient-poor saltmarsh cordgrass, saltmeadow hay and beach grass. The horses’ short stature is a result of hundreds of years of adaptation to this low quality diet. Genetically they are considered horses, even though they are now pony size.
The Assateague horses drink over twice the amount of water that domesticated horses will due to their salty food supply. All that drinking combined with a high salt diet contributes to their bloated appearance.” (US Nat’l Park Service) The herd size is 137.
From wild horses to broad views - I checked out the long pedestrian bridge over Chincoteague Sound. Nice views up sound to Ocean City, across the barrier island to the Atlantic Ocean and then down the sound. The lower part of the barrier Island also has a large but separate herd of wild horses. The group that controls them (not NPS) rounds them up and makes them swim across a channel to a town where many of them are auctioned off as a means of population control. In 1947 a famous (as one of the locals told me) child’s book was written about the event called “Misty of Chincoteague.”