Childhood living is easy to do

For the July 4th holiday I convinced Chris to go to Chincoteague, VA on Assateague Island. Part of the island is a national seashore with wild horses. The local legend is that these horses were on a Spanish ship that was sinking, but the horses somehow made it to shore and survived. The horses eat a certain type of plant that is nutritionally poor and causes their stomachs to bloat. Over the years this diet has stunted their growth so they look like ponies, but they are really horses with big stomachs.

We stayed at a nice bed and breakfast called the Inn at Poplar Corner that had a wonderful jacuzzi bath that took up a corner in the bathroom. It was a great location on Chincoteague's main drag and we could walk to all the local shops, restaurants and movie theater. It seemed like small version of Martha's Vineyard--although I have never been.

There wasn't much nightlife in Chincoteague so we decided to go to the movie theater to watch Hancock. The movie theater looked like a small auditorium reminiscent of my elementary school auditorium. There was even a stage and the seats didn't have cup holders. I was so awed I embarrassed myself by snapping a quick picture.

However, the MacGuffin (Doug's term) of the trip for me was to see the horses, which took a bit of effort beyond just laying on the beach. After a long walk I finally encountered a couple of horses on the beach. A bit later, I saw the icons of the island - the horses with the white and brown spots.

I had been warned that the horses are not friendly and there are signs everywhere telling visitors not to pet them. Some visitors ignored the warning and pet them anyway. Ranger Barebly came over to tell them to stop and told a few stories.

Apparently, the white tailed horse is really mean. He's seen it take a small child in it's mouth and throw it. Ranger Barebly's boss mistakenly came up behind it once and felt the horse's 1200 pounds as it kicked him. The meanest of the horses was "Big Red", who sought ways to be mean. Big Red died when a car hit him, but he didn't take it lying down. Even after one of his legs was broken he thrashed the car that hit him so badly it was declared a total loss. He then limped into the woods to die, but Ranger Barebly followed and shot him to put him out of his misery.

Here's a link to our flickr page from this trip if you want to see more photos.