It was a beautiful day and rain was in the forecast for tomorrow, so we decided to go see the Wild Horses today. As an after thought, I said maybe we should call and make reservations. We did and after our third call where they were all booked, we called Bob's Off Road. We figured the name alone should bring us luck. They could not take us but their other location Wild Horse Tours could take us at 2:00 pm. It was close to 10:00 so we left immediately.
We arrived about 12:30 pm, checked in and paid. We got a recommendation for lunch. Uncle Ike's. We found it easily but we were not impressed with the menu, so we ended up at Fat Crab & BBQ Co. Good choice.
After lunch, we had enough time to do a little shopping and head back to the Wild Horse Office. We noticed like Washington and Bath, had their crabs, Corolla has horses.
Our transportation was a truck with bench seats, a small cushion and a canvas top. At 2:00 p.m. our exact time we headed to the beach.
We thought we see horses on the beach, like in the postcards we bought. We were oh so wrong. The first horse we saw was in the front yard of a house setting in the sand dunes, nearby her baby was napping. Our tour guide told us they eat just about anything, but really like the yards of the beach houses. These horses are not fenced in, even though it may look that way in the pictures.
Let me give you a little history on these horses. Horses first came to the Indies with Christopher Columbus in 1493. He realized how important horses would be in the future and made sure every ship from then on brought horses with them, Spanish Mustangs. In 1500 and 1525, three expeditions were sent from the Indies to the Carolina. The captain of the ship died of a fever and the colony soon was in ruins. The 150 residents left caught a boat back to the Indies, but the horses remained.
There use to be thousands of the Spanish Mustangs in the Carolina's. The Department of Fish and Game are in charge of these horses at present. The herd that is in Corolla is about 120 horses. But the Fish and Game Department wants to keep the herd at about 60 horses, which our tour guide said was too small of a number for healthy breeding. There is a bill in the Senate now to increase the number allowed and to switch the management to Homeland Security. If you want more information about this bill click on this link:
This horse has a friend on its' back, the Cattle Egret. The Egret eats flies and bugs that bother the horse, so the horse is happy to let it ride on its' back. They are often seen by their feet.
Horses who are not healthy and too sick to be treated on the beach, are removed and can never be reintroduced. This mare and her colt may be removed soon, as the mare was only 2 years old, when she got pregnant and not really mature enough to mother a colt. Now mother and colt are both malnourished and may soon be removed to save their lives. They then would be put up for adoption, going price about $600.00, pretty reasonable. I can hear my friend Jackie's mind plotting as I type.
On the way back, we stopped at an old, 1950, just a year younger than me, U.S. Coast Guard Station and look out. When it was purchased by a real estate company. It was completely buried in sand.
As Bob and I left town, we saw another Corolla horse.
We are loving the Outer Banks, tomorrow Kitty Hawk.
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