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April 6, 2009
The much-loved Ocracoke ponies get their own ‘stimulus package’ from NPS By JORDAN TOMBERLIN 
The
banker ponies of Ocracoke have enjoyed a long and storied history on
the island, and while no one knows for sure when or how they got there,
one thing is certain—they have always been a source of great
pride and admiration for residents and a fascinating attraction for
visitors.
After decades of being looked after by volunteers and part-time National Park Service employees, the ponies got their own full-time caretaker last year. And this year the Park Service plans to install interpretative signage at the pony pen, so visitors can better understand the history of the ponies and what they have meant to Ocracoke. According to legend, the ponies are descendants of horses left on the Outer Banks by shipwrecked explorers from the 16th and 17th centuries. European explorers frequently carried livestock aboard their ships, and if the vessel ran aground—not uncommon on these barriers islands—the crew would toss any animals overboard in order to lighten their load and refloat the boats. Some speculate that when Sir Richard Granville’s ship, Tiger, ran aground at Ocracoke in 1565, he unloaded Spanish Mustangs on the island. Another theory holds that a failed 1526 Spanish colony, located south of Ocracoke, may have abandoned their horses, which then slowly made their way north to the island. In any case, the banker horses have been documented on the island since the 1730s, when the first European settlers arrived, and have been treasured by islanders and guests ever since. The horses were used by the U.S. Life Saving Service to patrol the beaches and haul equipment to shipwreck sites until 1915. The Coast Guard also used them for beach patrols during World War II, and the Ocracoke Boy Scouts, who cared for the ponies in the late 1950s, had the only mounted troop in the nation. Prior to 1959, the horses ran wild on Ocracoke, at times numbering as many as 300, but after the highway was built in 1957, the horses were penned to protect them from harm and to limit overgrazing of sea oats. After the ponies were penned, it fell to the National Park Service staff to care for them, which they have done faithfully since the mid-1960s. Until last year, this task was carried out by seasonal employees, whose primary obligations were to the law enforcement or maintenance divisions, and a number of dedicated volunteers. “The problem with that,” said Darrell Echols, assistant superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, “was that there really wasn’t enough time.” The Park Service officials knew that, in order to properly maintain the ponies, they needed someone who could care for the herd full-time, so they decided to go through their budget and find the funds for a permanent caretaker position. They submitted the pony pen project for the 2008 Centennial Challenge Program, receiving a grant that matched the estimated $12,000 the Park had collected from donations and the Adopt-a-Pony program—the primary sources of funding for pony care. As “soft funds,” the approximately $24,000 grant couldn’t be used to fund a permanent, salaried position, and park officials had originally planned to use the grant money to fund a one-year temporary caretaker position. But, given the ponies’ cultural and historical significance, they opted to fully fund the position from within, combing their budget for hard money that could fund the position permanently. They were able to secure enough money for the job, using part of the grant money to offset their maintenance costs, and last August, they welcomed Laura Michaels, a veteran Park Service employee and pony pen volunteer, as the ponies’ first full-time caretaker. Michaels moved to Ocracoke from Cincinnati, where she had spent years as the lone female employee in a chemical factory, after a vacation on the island. It didn’t take much to convince her to move. One deep breath of the clean, salty island air, and she was sold. “As soon as I got off the ferry, I knew where I needed to be,” she says. She went back to Cincinnati, put in her two weeks notice, and never looked back. She started working with the Park Service as a seasonal employee in the maintenance division, the department that oversaw the care of the ponies, in 2002 and started volunteering at the pen shortly thereafter. Michaels is now the permanent caretaker of the 19 ponies that live in the Ocracoke pasture. They range from 4 to 32 years in age and vary in color and size, and the herd includes two young stallions on loan from Shackleford Banks that NPS is trying to breed with the youngest Ocracoke mares, Spirit and Maya. “To me they’re more like dogs, or children,” Michaels says of the ponies, a fact I came to understand as I followed Michaels around the grounds one morning while she and the ponies carried out their daily routine. Like most of us, the banker ponies begin their day with breakfast. Their grazing diet is supplemented with hay, which Michaels takes to all the different feeding troughs first thing in the morning, and grain, which looks a lot like rabbit pellets, but is very popular with the ponies nonetheless. As you might imagine, feeding 19 hungry mouths gets pretty expensive. Every other month, the barn is restocked with 376 bails of hay, and four times a year, 110 50-pound bags of grain are delivered to the pen. The grain alone costs about $2,000 per shipment. While the ponies munched on their hay, Michaels went to the barn and filled a medium-sized bucket full of grain, and as we walked through the pasture, distributing the ponies’ second and favorite breakfast course, she dished the details of life in the pony pen. Each pony has a name—some of which are pretty funny—and its own unique personality. Baronessa is the friendliest one. Lawton is the youngest and most playful. Bonita is a bit of an alpha female, and Luna is notorious for nibbling. While all the ponies were friendly, some of them obliged my curiosity more readily than others. Baronessa, true to Michaels’ description, couldn’t have been more receptive, but when I approached Rebecca, a white mare grazing near Baronessa in the front pen, I got the cold shoulder and the distinct impression that she didn’t appreciate my interrupting her breakfast. At first, Lawton and Little Doc seemed just as curious about me as I was about them. But Lawton, who, at 4 years old, is the newest addition to the herd, quickly found something more interesting, while Little Doc, an older gelding, was apparently much more taken with my scarf than he was with me. Of all the ponies I had the pleasure of meeting, it was Mr. Bob that captivated me the most. At 32, Mr. Bob is the oldest pony in the herd, and a resident of what Michaels lovingly calls “the geriatric pen,” which, located at the back of the pasture, is where ponies requiring special attention are corralled. There was nothing particularly remarkable about Mr. Bob, but he had a distinguished air about him, and I liked imagining all the stories he could tell about all the things he’d seen. Mr. Bob was the last pony fed, and as we walked back to the main pens, Michaels explained that, after their breakfast, the ponies will often take a little siesta. “They’ll sit and lie down,” she said. “They like to rest and sun themselves.” Sure enough, we found Bonita taking an after-breakfast nap, sprawled out on sunny, isolated patch of ground like a big puppy. Ponies that don’t feel like napping or sun-bathing after breakfast have almost 100 acres of land at their disposal, which stretches back almost to the sound, where they can run and play. And when they just need to get away from it all, there’s a big new barn, built after Hurricane Isabel, with stalls for every horse in the herd, where they can escape the pressures of pasture life, though, according to Michaels, they almost always prefer to be outside. It’s tough being a pony. Visiting the pen and observing the banker ponies in captivity, it’s easy to forget that these were once wild creatures who roamed Ocracoke long before villagers and tourists, and it’s even easier to lose sight of the cultural and historical impact they’ve had on the island. That’s something NPS plans to remedy in the coming years. For years, the Park’s interpretive division has offered presentations, three times a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day, on the history and significance of the ponies. There are also signs at the pen and fliers in the visitor’s center that folks who miss the programs can read. But it’s time for those programs to be updated and expanded, so this year, NPS is making plans to enhance their seasonal programs, improve interpretive signage, and develop new wayside exhibits, all of which will, hopefully, help visitors better understand the role the ponies have played in Ocracoke’s history. “We hope to get it going this year, but it’s a long process,” Echols said. It’s also an expensive project. Because the Park’s interpretive division is responsible for programs and signage on all of the Park’s historical sites, which include the pony pen, the Wright Brothers Memorial, and everything in between, they need help from outside, which requires additional funds. Though the Park will put some of the grant money toward development of the new programs, most of that money has to go toward offsetting the expense of care for the ponies and maintaining the pen. Even with grant money, the park relies heavily on public support to help maintain the herd, including their popular Adopt-a-Pony program. The program allows visitors to the pony pen to become one of the official adoptive parents of their favorite pony. All you have to do is pick out the pony you wish to adopt and then go to the visitor’s center, fill out a form, and donate $25, and you get a packet with a picture and information about your officially adopted pony. I plan to adopt Mr. Bob. CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDE SHOW |
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